Emotional Responses to Fiction
1. The psychology of emotions about fiction Typically, if harm comes to someone I care about, I would feel a great deal of sorrow and concern for that person. I may also feel anger at whomever or whatever harmed them and would be motivated to act on their behalf. However, we generally won’t have such reactions during our emotional engagement with works of fiction. To borrow an example from Radford (1975: 70), I do not weep over Mercutio’s body after he is killed while watching a theat...
