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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/2445/172140
Negative empathy in narrative: humanizing evil in In Cold Blood and Les bienveillantes
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Abstract
Prompted by the critical void in affect theory about how literary affects are created, the present MA thesis aims to analyse the emotional response to negative empathy precisely as a literary narratological construction. To do so, drawing on L. Doležel’s conception of the theory of mimesis as a “possible-world semantics” and on the subsequent understanding of fictional narratives as “parasocial” worlds (Oatley), the main body of this MA thesis will consist on a narratological analysis of T. Capote’s In Cold Blood and J. Littell’s Les bienveillantes. This examination of both novels focuses on the literary devices ―which I have called “empathic builders” ― that promote an empathic engagement with negative characters. On the one hand, it reveals in-text negative empathy to be a formal phenomenon with a material dimension; on the other hand, it exemplifies the capacity of literary texts to enlarge the reader’s affective and empathic capacity
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Màster Oficial en Construcció i Representació d'Identitats Culturals (CRIC), Facultat de Filologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2019-2020, Tutora: Cristina Alsina Rísquez
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BAILA-BIGNÉ, Sara. Negative empathy in narrative: humanizing evil in In Cold Blood and Les bienveillantes. [consulted: 15 of June of 2026]. Available at: https://hdl.handle.net/2445/172140