Jezik, književnost i empatija (2025) (109-118. str.)
AUTOR(I) / AUTHOR(S): Zorica Lola Jelic 
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DOI: 10.46793/LLE25.109J
SAŽETAK / ABSTRACT:
According to Suzanne Keen, narrative empathy is sharing of feelings induced by reading, viewing, or hearing narratives. Mental simulations that occur while reading engage the reader with the narrative on various levels, including the emotional and cognitive ones. Emotional fusion of the reader and the character enables an immersion of the reader into the narrative world which he/she perceives as the real one; even though the reader is aware of the illusion. Adrian Tchaikovsky’s science fiction novel Alien Clay weaves real world concerns with science fiction elements creating characterization empathy. The main character Dr. Daghdev is a scientist living in a dystopian future government, on Earth, in which totalitarian overlords called the Mandate censor information, impede free thought, and persecute intellectuals for freedom of speech. For his subversive academic endeavors, Daghdev is hunted and ultimately imprisoned. He is sentenced and sent to a remote hostile alien world Kiln to toil for the remainder of his life in a prison camp or so he thinks. This paper takes a presentist approach to the theory of narrative empathy in this novel and shows how the two theories work within the genre of science fiction. Therefore, the presentist approach argues that extra-textual elements influence the way Alien Clay is interpreted in today’s world, and how narrative empathy changes into sympathy when readers encounter a novum.
KLJUČNE REČI / KEYWORDS:
empathy, academia, freedom of speech, subversive social behavior, science fiction
PROJEKAT / ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:
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