Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Possible Worlds Theory and Readers' Emotional Responses to Literature

Possible Worlds Theory and Readers' Emotional Responses to Literature

Mansworth, Megan

Hardcover

Literary CriticismLinguisticsCognition

ISBN10: 1350428930
ISBN13: 9781350428935
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: Sep 18 2025
Pages: 240
Weight: 1.13
Height: 0.56 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

This book develops a cognitive stylistic exploration of readers' emotional experiences of literature.

Adopting Possible Worlds Theory as a framework, the volume constructs a stylistic analysis of some of the ways in which novels elicit readers' emotions. A typology of past, present, and future textual actual and possible worlds is formulated to frame analysis of three novels: A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, and The Trick Is to Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway. The author integrates close stylistic analysis with the use of empirical data drawn from reader interviews and online reader reviews. The analysis of these diverse 20th-century novels works to show the utility of the typology for analysis formulated for this book, as well as to demonstrate the value of incorporating empirical reader data in analysis of the ways in which novels may affect readers' emotions.

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