Imagination’s Role in Emotional Responses to Fiction

Authors

  • Siranat Thamtrachai

Keywords:

emotional responses, fiction, imagination, imaginative process, emotions, rational feelings, philosophy of literature

Abstract

This essay argues that emotional responses to fiction are genuine and rational. Emotional responses are not reflexes; they are an intrinsically valuable process of deliberation. The indispensable requirement for an emotional response is imagination. When reading fiction, imagination helps us emotionally engage with the text. Imaginative involvement in reading profoundly influences the reader; it can motivate us in myriad ways and blur awareness of the difference between reality and fantasy, while also enabling understanding and sharing of the feelings of fictional characters and even authors. Lastly, imaginative resistance shows that we intuitively use the same moral standards to judge both fictional content and fact. This is evidence of the rationality of our imaginative responses to both fiction and reality.

References

Thai
Tolstoy, Leo ตอลสตอย, เลียฟ. 2014. Anna Karenina อันนา คาเรนินา [Anna Karenina] (Sodsai, Trans.). Bangkok: Gypsy Group.

Foreign language
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Matravers, Derek. 2006. The Challenge of Irrationalism, and How Not to Meet It. In Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, ed. Matthew Kieran, 254-264. MA: Blackwell.

Moran, Richard. 1994. The Expression of Feeling in Imagination. Philosophical Review 103(1): 75-106. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2185873

Stock, Kathleen. 2017. Fiction, Belief, and ‘Imaginative Resistance’. In Only Imagine: Fiction, Interpretation and Imagination, 114-144. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Published

2019-12-27

How to Cite

Thamtrachai, S. (2019). Imagination’s Role in Emotional Responses to Fiction. Journal of Letters, 48(2), 95–112. Retrieved from https://so03.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/jletters/article/view/232456

Issue

Vol. 48 No. 2 (2019): July - December 2019

Section

Articles

License

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