Abstract
Within the field of narrative empathy studies, the concept of “negative empathy,” meaning a sharing of emotions with morally negative characters, has become increasingly discussed. Through the examination of The Talented Mr Ripley (1955) by Patricia Highsmith, this article contributes new insights into narratological and stylistic devices eliciting readers’ empathy. This study analyses responses from expert and non-expert readers to understand how they conceptualise empathy and qualify their engagement with the novel’s eponymous character. I argue that the novel’s figural narration, which involves extensive displays of the character’s mind and silencing the narrator’s moral guidance, invites empathy. Finally, I suggest that Highsmith manipulates her readers through three related stylistic techniques (free indirect discourse, stylistic contagion and equivocal sentences), which blur the lines between the third-person narration and the character’s inner discourse. By insidiously presenting the hero’s behaviour as sensible and justified, Highsmith persuades readers to become not only witnesses but accomplices to Ripley’s crimes.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Introduction: stylistic approaches to narrative empathy
- The role of pathetic fallacy in shaping narrative empathy
- From witness to accomplice: the manipulation of readers’ empathy through consciousness representation in Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley
- Exploring the potential of sentiment analysis for the study of negative empathy
- “The unlikeliest twins”: the role of intertextual foregrounding and defamiliarisation in creating empathy in Meursault, contre-enquête
- I fucking love you! Emotional address in Fleabag, or how viewers’ empathy becomes voyeurism
- Connecting with the world: poetic synaesthesia, sensory metaphors and empathy
- Afterword
- Refreshed hypotheses
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Introduction: stylistic approaches to narrative empathy
- The role of pathetic fallacy in shaping narrative empathy
- From witness to accomplice: the manipulation of readers’ empathy through consciousness representation in Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley
- Exploring the potential of sentiment analysis for the study of negative empathy
- “The unlikeliest twins”: the role of intertextual foregrounding and defamiliarisation in creating empathy in Meursault, contre-enquête
- I fucking love you! Emotional address in Fleabag, or how viewers’ empathy becomes voyeurism
- Connecting with the world: poetic synaesthesia, sensory metaphors and empathy
- Afterword
- Refreshed hypotheses