BDSL-Klassifikation: 03.00.00 Literaturwissenschaft > 03.07.00 Ästhetik
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Stories can elicit powerful emotions. A key emotional response to narrative plots (e.g., novels, movies, etc.) is suspense. Suspense appears to build on basic aspects of human cognition such as processes of expectation, anticipation, and prediction. However, the neural processes underlying emotional experiences of suspense have not been previously investigated. We acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data while participants read a suspenseful literary text (E.T.A. Hoffmann's "The Sandman") subdivided into short text passages. Individual ratings of experienced suspense obtained after each text passage were found to be related to activation in the medial frontal cortex, bilateral frontal regions (along the inferior frontal sulcus), lateral premotor cortex, as well as posterior temporal and temporo-parietal areas. The results indicate that the emotional experience of suspense depends on brain areas associated with social cognition and predictive inference.
Timothy Findley's "The Wars" is a very powerful and disturbing book. Despite the novel's historically distant setting, the events of "The Wars" do not seem distant at all: the reader is brought close to the horrible violence of World War I and its devastating impact on a young mind. The question is why? The topic is certainly not new — we are аll too familiar with the World War I period. The theme is also an old one — a young man's loss of innocence and baptism by fire on the battlefield. The novelty and vividness of Findley's work are attributable to another source: its form. I hope to show that one artistic device in particular — de-automatization — is largely responsible for the novel's powerful impact on the modern reader.