『황금색 공책』과 공감의 문학성 = The Golden Notebook and Literariness of Empathy

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Drawing on recent empathy studies, this essay aims to rethink the vexed relation between empathy and literature, so as to find a more solid basis of ethical potential for literature than the humanist defence of literary imagination as a key enhancer of empathy. Amy Coplan and Peter Goldie’s stricter definition of empathy is noteworthy in this regard, as they distinguish a set of similar emotional states such as emotional contagion, identification, perspective-taking, and sympathy from empathy proper. Referencing their view, I examine Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook and highlight the double workings of empathic connection and dissociation. The novel explores negative effects of feminine hyper-empathy along with ideological implications of narrative empathy. Further, its meta-fictional aspects demonstrate the literariness of empathy; as an emotive-cognitive process, it takes place when the subject aptly characterizes the object and takes his or her perspective, while keeping intact the self-other boundary, thereby performing an act of genuine understanding. I relate this dimension to Judith Jordan’s notion of retrospective self-empathy. Anna’s fictional doubles function as the experiencing self, the authorial Anna playing the role of the observing self. This leads to a higher plane of self-empathy and empathic understanding of the other.

참고문헌 (Reference)

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