The Role of Literature in Developing Empathy: A Critical Examination of Narrative Fiction and Emotional Intelligence in Adolescent Readers
Twinkle Suri
Dean Academic Affairs, Cluster University of Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir, India.
Banpreet Kour
Associate Professor, Department of English, Government Degree College Samba, Jammu and Kashmir, India.
This paper explores the enduring debate about the empathizing ability of reading narrative fiction but focuses on how this connection can be taken into consideration for secondary English classroom practices. The paper builds on cognitive and social psychology studies and literary theory to discuss the mechanisms that have been proposed to connect fiction reading to perspective taking and emotional understanding such as narrative transportation and simulation theory. It then reviews the evidence for and against these claims, highlighting that the effects seem to be highly dependent upon the type of text, reader engagement, and guided reflection. The focus shifts to the implications for the English teacher, who is not a natural empathetic reader of literary texts, and how the practice of materializing empathy must be explicitly grounded in discussion, character analysis and reflection by the teacher.
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