
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Negative Empathy in Literature and the Arts
About this book
Negative Empathy in Literature and the Arts explores how readers and viewers engage cognitively and affectively with ethically troubling artworks across literature, the visual and performing arts, and screen media. Drawing on aesthetics, cultural history and theory, psychology, and neuroscience, Stefano Ercolino and Massimo Fusillo introduce the concept of "negative empathy" to describe the ambivalent and destabilizing emotional responses elicited by representations of negativity in art. Rather than dismissing empathy as naïve, the authors argue for a more nuanced understanding of its darker forms and their cognitive and ethical value. Through a comparative and intermedial approach, the book analyzes case studies from Littell's The Kindly Ones to Wilson's Deafman Glance; from Verdi's Macbeth and Nitsch's Theatre of Orgies and Mysteries to Caravaggio's Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, Mapplethorpe's "X" Portfolio, Kiefer's The Seven Heavenly Palaces, Haneke's The White Ribbon, and Gilligan's Breaking Bad—offering a compelling new theory of aesthetic engagement.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Endorsement Page
- Half Title page
- Series Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Why Negative Empathy?
- 1 History and Theory of an Idea
- 2 Seductions of Rhetoric
- 3 In the Rhythm of the Scene
- 4 Nostalgia and Anguish for Life
- 5 The Multiplied Gaze
- 6 Audiovisual Simulations
- Bibliography
- Index