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164226

Walking in Patients’ Shoes: Narrative Empathy in Lisa Genova’s Every Note Played

Article

Last updated: 04 Jan 2025

Subjects

-

Tags

اللغويات

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the ethics and aesthetics of Lisa Genova's Every Note Played, and distinctively how such a medical fiction involves readers in an empathetic correlation with the ALS patient protagonist. Drawn on Suzanne Keen's theory of “narrative empathy," the study highlights Genova's ability to create narrative empathy in this work of fiction, which has not been thoroughly investigated in an academic field. It shows the ways in which Genova employs a number of representational strategies and narrative techniques to stimulate readers' emphatic imagination that may eventually evoke their empathic responses. The study, further, shows how Genova creates a circle of bounded, ambassadorial and broadcast empathic reading that allows her to convey the experience of ALS to different audiences with a view of engaging them in the suffering of the patient protagonist in the story. Finally, this paper is an attempt to examine how empathy for patients in medical fiction is one of the most influential motivations for ethical decisions and prosocial actions, significant not only for how readers experience patients' emotions but also how they take actions to support them in real life.

DOI

10.21608/jfafu.2021.164226

Keywords

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Empathic Response, Medical Fiction, Narrative Empathy, Prosocial Actions

Authors

First Name

Nihal

Last Name

Zaki

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

کلياة الألسن - جامعة المنيا

Email

nehal.adel@minia.edu.eg

City

Cairo

Orcid

-

Volume

13

Article Issue

العدد 1 (اللغويات)

Related Issue

19806

Issue Date

2021-01-01

Receive Date

2021-04-15

Publish Date

2021-01-01

Page Start

1,123

Page End

1,162

Print ISSN

2357-0709

Online ISSN

2735-3281

Link

https://jfafu.journals.ekb.eg/article_164226.html

Detail API

https://jfafu.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=164226

Order

22

Type

المقالة الأصلية

Type Code

970

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

مجلة کلية الآداب جامعة الفيوم

Publication Link

https://jfafu.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Walking in Patients’ Shoes: Narrative Empathy in Lisa Genova’s Every Note Played

Details

Type

Article

Created At

22 Jan 2023