Engaging Characters

Having clarified the concept of character and established a ‘cognitive-anthropological’ model of mind driven by active, imaginative problem-solving, for which emotion figures as a part of its reasoning and problem-solving capacity rather than an impediment to it, the ground is clear for an alternative to the conventional model of ‘character identification’. That is the task of this, the pivotal chapter of the study as a whole, in which the interrelations among the various concepts discussed in other chapters are explicated. It introduces the model of character engagement, which posits three distinct levels of engagement with characters—recognition, alignment, and allegiance—which together comprise the structure of sympathy. The chapter concludes with an examination of the distinct role of empathy (and related types of response, including emotional simulation and affective mimicry) in our responses to fiction, and of the relationship between sympathy and empathy.