| Keywords [eng] |
naratyvinė empatija, empatinės naratyvinės technikos, charakterizacija, sąmonės reprezentacija, kalbos ir minčių pateikimas, skaitytojų reakcijų tyrimai, empirinė stilistika, poezija, Louise Glück, teksto poveikis narrative empathy, empathetic narrative techniques, characterisation, consciousness representation, speech and thought presentation, reader-response research, empirical stylistics, poetry, Louise Glück, textual effects |
| Abstract [eng] |
While narrative empathy in fictional prose has sparked considerable scholarly interest, the ways in which poetic texts invite empathy remain underexplored. This thesis aims to extend narrative empathy research to poetry by examining empathetic narrative techniques, particularly characterisation, in Louise Glück’s mythological retellings: “Orfeo” and “Relic” from Vita Nova, and “The Myth of Innocence” and “A Myth of Devotion” from Averno. Methodologically, the thesis adopts a mixed-method approach. Since speech and thought presentation are treated as key aspects of characterisation, the stylistic analysis focuses on these modes. It uses Leech and Short’s model (2007), and the results are assessed both quantitatively and qualitatively. In the empirical part, reader responses collected through an online questionnaire were coded thematically, drawing on Fernández-Quintanilla’s framework for identifying evidence of empathy in readers’ responses (2018). The stylistic findings show that, across the four poems, the dominant modes of speech and thought presentation and their effects vary. In “Orfeo,” Free Direct Speech exposes Orpheus’s artistic self-regard; in “Relic,” the same mode foregrounds Eurydice’s suffering. In “The Myth of Innocence,” Free Indirect Thought makes Persephone’s trauma and identity crisis central to the poem’s empathetic force. In “A Myth of Devotion,” Free Direct Thought, Free Indirect Thought, and Narrator’s Representation of Thought Acts give access to Hades’s longing while exposing his control. The reader-response data demonstrate that participants most often engaged with the characters through Implicit Empathy, especially Emotional Attribution and Evaluation alongside Situational Understanding, while Perspective-Taking was rare. Reader-selected passages broadly supported the stylistic findings. Significantly, the analysis reveals that these techniques do not produce a uniform empathetic effect. Empathetic engagement was often complicated or overridden by negative moral evaluation, especially in responses to “Orfeo” and “A Myth of Devotion,” which aligns with Fernández-Quintanilla’s findings (2018). These patterns also support a feminist reading of Glück’s retellings, as empathetic attention is directed toward female experiences of distress. The thesis concludes that empathetic narrative techniques in poetry function as invitations rather than guarantees of empathy: readers may respond with empathy, ambivalence, or resistance. The study is limited by its relatively small scope, single-researcher coding, and questionnaire format. Future research could apply the framework to a larger corpus of poetry, expand it to other poetic techniques, or employ interviews and focus groups to access readers’ interpretive processes. Overall, the thesis broadens narrative empathy research by extending it to poetic texts and underscores the value of combining stylistic analysis with empirical reader-response evidence. |
