Project: Between compassion and solidarity. Constellations of empathy in novels of social criticism (1848-1980)

2016-01-01 – 2020-10-31

Abstract

The project examines the construction of empathy in Flemish novels of social criticism (1848-1980). The corpus consists of novels which strategically evoke empathy for and within the working class to criticize perceived social injustice. A cognitive and narratological analysis of these constellations of empathy allows us to chart the developments and the coherence of this strong tradition of social criticism .