Cognitive and empirical literary studies have mostly focused on readers’ response to single characters, so that we lack a model to describe how the reader’s mind tackles the complex constellations of multiple characters in prose fiction. In this talk, I will introduce the concept of the Multiple Character Scenario (MCS) as a new category for the analysis of narrative engagement, arguing that interpersonal relationality is at the core of narrative engagement.
The MCS is defined as the reader’s augmented mental correlate of character constellations in narrative. It integrates embodied, culturally shared, and more abstract modes of cognition, and it combines mimetic, thematic, and synthetic aspects of literary reading. Furthermore, it directs attention to modes of perspectivization unconnected to an individual character’s perspective that is usually seen to dominate such experiences as empathy or identification, whose role in literary reading perhaps needs to be reconsidered.