Possible Worlds Theory and Readers' Emotional Responses to Literature

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.