Literature and Moral Feeling

Patrick Colm Hogan, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor in the English Department and the Cognitive Science Program at the University of Connecticut, is the author of over twenty scholarly books, including The Mind and Its Stories: Narrative Universals and Human Emotion (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and What Literature Teaches Us About Emotion (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

• Introduction: What (comparative) literature tells us about ethics; 1. Defining ethics; 2. The implied ethics of Julius Caesar; 3. Narrative universals, emotion, and ethics; 4. Ethics and narrative genre: Some illustrative cases; 5. Emotion and empathy; 6. The dynamics of empathic response: Simulation and inference in A Midsummer Night's Dream; 7. Evaluating empathy; 8. The critical empathy of Angels in America; Afterword: The limits of ethics – On free will and blame.

'The philosophy of ethics has been central to understanding human interaction since ancient times. Now Patrick Colm Hogan, the most important researcher in the twenty-first century on the relationships between psychology and worldwide literature, has written a fascinating update. He says that ethical actions typically 'oppose egocentric self-interest' and are often based in empathy. With this beginning, and explorations that range from Shakespeare's plays to Chinese poetry and a German movie, he deepens our understanding of how we might act for the best towards others.' Keith Oatley, author of Our Minds, Our Selves: A Brief History of Psychology