Lear and his feelings, and in Cordelia and hers. I typically also imagine what
Lear may be thinking and feeling that might lead him to act as he does. But
do Ifeel hisbitter vengefulness (through simulating his mental activity)? This
seems doubtful. As Noël Carroll notes in criticizing simulationism, in reading
we typically learn about the thoughts and emotions of characters either
because they tell us about them in dialogue or because they are revealed in
the commentary of an omniscient narrator.“Character simulation”or one-
self imaginatively adopting the viewpoint, thoughts, and emotions of
another“is just not as pervasive as the simulation theorist suggests.”^32 It
seems even more doubtful that we simulate makers’or characters’emotions
when we turn to parallel problems of emotional response in other media. Do
I myself feel the manic energy and exhilaration that Jackson Pollock may
have felt in paintingBlue Poles? Do I feel either Elizabeth Bennett’s embarrass-
ment for her family or Jane Austen’s amusement in and charity toward her
characters? Carroll suggests not.
Elsewhere Feagin describes other modes of emotional response to fiction,
usefully and aptly distinguishing sympathy from empathy. In empathizing,
one“simulatesthe mental activity and processes of the one with whom one
empathizes.”^33 For example, I may imagine myself to be in Luke Skywalker’s
position and to feel his feelings as he maneuvers to fire the fatal rocket at the
Death Star. Movies often invite empathy by using shots that make the point
of view of their characters available to us. Lyric poetry similarly offers us a
speaking voice with which to identify. In contrast, sympathizing requires
only“having feelings or emotions that are in concert with the interests or
desires the sympathizer (justifiably) attributes to the protagonist...[The
sympathizer has] a desire that the specific interests or desires of the protag-
onist in question be satisfied.”^34 This seems to capture much of the quality of
my affective engagement and interest in the careers of fictional characters.
As Gregory Currie notes, while“we step into and out of characters’shoes all
the time...few works depend on, or could reasonably mandate, our imagina-
tively identifying with a character throughout.”^35 I desire that the
(^32) Noël Carroll,“Art and Ethical Criticism: An Overview of Recent Directions of Research,”
Ethics110, 2 ( January 2000), pp. 350–87 at p. 373.
(^33) Feagin,Reading with Feeling, p. 113. (^34) Ibid., p. 114.
(^35) Gregory Currie,“The Capacities that Enable Us to Produce and Consume Art,”inImagin-
ation, Philosophy, and the Arts, eds. Matthew Kieran and Dominic McIver Lopes (London:
Routledge, 2003), pp. 293–304 at pp. 296, 297.
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