Van binnenuit bekeken. Gedachtenlezen en ingebedde perspectieven in Mrs Dalloway en De maagd Marino

Samenvatting

Novels expose the emotions and thoughts of one or more characters. Various scholars have argued that they therefore put a strong claim on their readers’ capacity to deal with higher-order mindreading/theory of mind. Lisa Zunshine has linked higher-order mindreading to the issues of cognitive load and literary quality. The current paper scrutinises her views using two case studies: a close reading of a passage from Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925) and an analysis of Yves Petry’s novel De maagd Marino (2010). Insights gained from these cases are applied to current debates in both literary studies and the cognitive sciences.