an in-time vision of literary works in their widespread spectrum is what always leads to the enrichment of literature and is also what helps transform it from a static state to a dynamic one. in the meantime, since the myths evolve and proceed with the passage of time and are always present in the course of history, they cannot be held an exception to this fact. the myths, among the different t...

What fascinates me most about literature is its portrayal of human beings and their relationships. For many years I have been developing a psychological approach in which I try to understand the behavior of realistically drawn characters in the same way that we understand the behavior of real people. These characters are not flesh and blood creatures, of course, but are imagined human beings wh...

Real people sometimes appear in fiction, for example, Napoleon in War and Peace. Readers may also believe that a person who never actually appears in a novel could potentially appear there. In two experiments, we find evidence that readers think that a real person could appear in specific novels and physically interact with a character. This effect is magnified when the person and character sha...

or concrete entities. I could also give a similar story-relative account of the issue as to whether fictional characters are individual versus general entities such as universals; here too I can simply reply that it depends on whether or not the relevant characters are represented as individuals or as universals, in the fictional story. 35. Thomasson, Fiction and Metaphysics, chap. 1. 36. That ...

While there is much new work in the field of communications that challenges such distinctions, many scholars who study the medium still assume a clear and natural separation between fictional and non-fictional television. Falling into the former category are most prime-time shows, specials, movies and other broadcasts serving, it is assumed, primarily as entertainment. Further, many scholars as...

Evidence for political effects from fictional programming remains thin. In this study we offer a conservative test of the political power of fictional television dramas by evaluating whether minor differences in character portrayals and plot details affect viewers’ attitudes and policy preferences. We rely on a variation on the switching replications design in which a representative sample watc...

We study the detection of character types from fictional dialog texts such as screenplays. As approaches based on the analysis of utterances' linguistic properties are not sufficient to identify all fictional character types, we develop an integrative approach that complements linguistic analysis with interactive and communication characteristics, and show that it can improve the identification...