20/S1 HMRT 2023 A: Are you convinced? Empathy from novels?

While novels definitely do create a sense of empathy towards the characters that they talk about that does not mean that the readers will want to continue whatever it was that these characters were fighting for in their everyday lives. The epistolary novel which Lynn Hunt talk about helps to further the empathy that the reader feels for the characters as they get a first hand knowledge about what the characters are feeling.

Novels allow people to free themselves from their everyday life and become apart of a world far from their own, thus while yes they feel empathy for the characters they might not want to connect it with their personal lives.

The empathy created from novels may help to sway the thoughts of the lower classes as it gives them a sense of whats right, but the more elite groups are more concerned about wealth and power to let the empathy they feel change them.

Empathy is definitely created from novels in some form or another but that does not always mean the it will bend the will of people who are so rooted in their way to change and fight for the rights of others.

Re: Are you convinced? Empathy from novels?

de Anna Sirois - martes, 15 de septiembre de 2020, 15:42

You have an interesting point here about how people in power may not necessarily be influenced through empathy. So where is that connection? How did people in power come around to understanding the need for human rights? And in that, was it through empathy? I agree that if readers feel empathy towards the characters in a novel, it does not necessarily mean they want certain aspects of the character or plot implemented in their own lives. However, I do think it is through empathy in novels we are then able to feel empathy towards people in our own lives. For example, if a novel has a character struggling with homelessness, the reader is then opened to that person's personal life. That reader is then going to empathize with homeless people they see around them in real life. As Hunt quoted Diderot in her lecture, he realized that "others have 'selves' too," through reading Richardon's book Pamela.