Coping with imaginative resistance

Daniel Altshuler, Emar Maier*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)
122 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

We propose to characterize imaginative resistance as the failure or unwillingness of the reader to take a fictional description of a deviant reality at face value. The goal of the paper is to explore how readers deal with such a breakdown of the default Face Value interpretation strategy. We posit two distinct interpretative ‘coping’ strategies which help the reader engage with the resistance-inducing fiction by attributing the offending content to one of the fictional characters. We present novel empirical evidence that shows that actual readers use these strategies and we flesh out the exact workings of these strategies by integrating them into a general formal semantic framework for interpreting fiction.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)523-549
Number of pages26
JournalJournal of Semantics
Volume39
Issue number3
Early online date19-Apr-2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug-2022

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