RATCLIFFE, Sophie, On Sympathy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008, 280 p.
ISBN 978-0-19-923987-0
RÉSUMÉ
What happens when we engage with fictional characters? How do ourimaginative engagements bear on our actions in the wider world? Movingbetween the literary and the philosophical, Sophie Ratcliffe considersthe ways in which readers feel when they read, and how they understandideas of feeling.
On Sympathy uses dramatic monologues based on The Tempestas its focus, and broachesquestions about fictional belief, morality, and the dynamics betweenreaders, writers, and fictional characters. The book challengesconventionally accepted ideas of literary identification and sympathy,and asks why the idea of sympathy has been seen as so important toliberal humanist theories of literary value.
Individual chapters on Robert Browning, W. H. Auden, and SamuelBeckett, whoall drew on Shakespeare's late play, offer new readings of some majorworks, while the book's epilogue tackles questions of contemporarysympathy. Ranging from the nineteenth century to the present day, thisimportant new study sets out to clarify and challenge currentassumptions about reading and sympathetic belief, shedding new light onthe idea and ideal of sympathy, the workings of affect andallusion, and the ethics of reading.
TABLES DES MATIÈRES
Introduction
1. Understanding Sympathy and Sympathetic Understanding
2. Browning's Strangeness
3. W. H. Auden: 'as mirrors are lonely'
4. Samuel Beckett: 'humanity in ruins'
Epilogue
BIOGRAPHIE
Sophie Ratcliffe, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in English at Keble College, Oxford