Empathy and the Psychology of Literary Modernism

Meghan Marie Hammond

Published by Edinburgh University Press 2014

Empathy and the Psychology of Literary Modernism

Meghan Marie Hammond

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748690992

Overview
Contents

About this book

Shows how fin de siècle conceptions of empathy are woven into the fabric of literary modernism

Empathy is a cognitive and affective structure of feeling, a bridge across interpersonal distance. Coined in 1909 to combine English ‘sympathy’ and German ‘Einfühlung,’ ‘empathy’ is a specifically twentieth-century concept of fellow feeling. Empathy and the Psychology of Literary Modernism looks into the little-known history of empathy, revealing how this multi-faceted concept had a profound effect on literary modernism.

Meghan Marie Hammond shows how five exemplary writers (Henry James, Dorothy Richardson, Katherine Mansfield, Ford Madox Ford, and Virginia Woolf) tackle the so-called ‘problem of other minds’ in ways that reflect and enrich early twentieth-century discourses of fellow feeling. Hammond argues that these authors reconfigure notions of intersubjective experience; their writings mark a key shift away from sympathetic forms of literary representation toward empathic forms that strive to provide an immediate sense of another’s thoughts and feelings. But while literary modernism values empathic experience as an ideal, it is also teeming with voices that recognize potential for danger, even violence, in acts of empathy. These voices illuminate our culture’s ongoing concern with empathy’s limits.

Key Features:

Recovers early psychology, a discipline that has often been neglected in favor of psychoanalysis, as a framework for literary modernism
Provides a conceptual history of empathy that expands our understanding of the modernist world
Grants new insight into modernist technique by explaining how it relates to contemporaneous psychological and aesthetic theories on empathy
Prompts a rethinking of empathy, a capacity that is as widely misunderstood as it is celebrated

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Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Abbreviations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: The Problem of Other Minds and the Fin de Siècle World Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Into Other Minds: William and Henry James Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	32
2. Dorothy Richardson’s Modernist Innovation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	60
3. Communities of Feeling in Katherine Mansfield’s Fiction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	90
4. Empathy and Violence in the Works of Ford Madox Ford Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	118
5. Virginia Woolf and the Limits of Empathy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	148
Coda: New Structures of Fellow Feeling Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	176
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	180
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	196

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 216
Keywords: Literary Studies

eBook

Published: October 8, 2014
ISBN: 9780748690992