Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading

by Richard J. Gerrig

What does it mean to be transported by a narrative—to create a world inside one's head? How do experiences of narrative worlds alter our experience of the real world? In this book Richard Gerrig integrates insights from cognitive psychology and from research linguistics, philosophy, and literary criticism to provide a cohesive account of what we have most often treated as isolated aspects of narrative experience.Drawing on examples from Tolstoy to Toni Morrison, Gerrig offers new analysis of some classic problems in the study of narrative. He discusses the ways in which we are cognitively equipped to tackle fictional and nonfictional narratives; how thought and emotion interact when we experience narrative; how narrative information influences judgments in the real world; and the reasons we can feel the same excitement and suspense when we reread a book as when we read it for the first time. Gerrig also explores the ways we enhance the experience of narratives, through finding solutions to textual dilemmas, enjoying irony at the expense of characters in the narrative, and applying a wide range of interpretive techniques to discover meanings concealed by and from authors.

Genres: Writing, Psychology, Nonfiction

291 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Richard J Gerrig earned his Ph.D. in cognitive psychology at Stanford University. His academic career began at Yale University, where he was awarded the Lex Hixon Prize for teaching excellence in the social sciences. He moved to Stony Brook University in 1994, where he is currently a professor of psychology. At Stony Brook, he has been actively involved in initiatives focused on innovations in undergraduate education. His research on cognitive psychological aspects of language use has been widely published. One line of work examines the mental processes that underlie efficient communication. A second research program considers the cognitive and emotional changes readers experience when they are transported to the worlds of stories. He has served as an associate editor for the journals Psychonomic Bulletin & Review and Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. He has been named a fellow of the Society for Text & Discourse, the American Psychological Association, and the Association for Psychological Science. His book Experiencing Narrative Worlds was published by Yale University Press.

Reviews

[Laura Walin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Again difficuties in rating academic pieces of work. Overall I think this was a solid compilation of various aspects on experienceing reading as the title suggests. Some kind of a subtitle could have been in placel, considering that the book as really about neuropsychological responses rather than anything else. What bathered me in teh most was that the author felt the need to explain in detial the various experiments, as if he needed to justify (again) the results in this work. Maybe that is the price one needs to pay for being interdisciplinary? Anyway an interesting compilation of results, illustrating that humans have the basic cognitiv mechnanisms that underlie the reception of any text in a similar way.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some great insight into immersion by explicating the metaphor of transportation. Good connections to research studies of pretend play, among other things.