Possible Worlds Theory and Readers' Emotional Responses to Literature

Enriches Possible Worlds Theory and stylistics by using reader response data and stylistic analysis in a framework of textual possible and actual worlds to explore how literary texts affect readers’ emotions.

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 (2006 [1995]), Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (2007 [1961]), and The Trick is to Keep Breathing (1999 [1989]) by Janice Galloway. 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.

The work enhances the utility of Possible Worlds Theory to stylistics by providing an enriched, temporally segmented conceptualisation of textual actual and possible worlds which, when used as a frame for analysis, helps to illuminate some of the ways in which novels affect readers’ emotions.