When characters in narrative fiction engage in direct speech, we read via a narrator’s quotation the perspectives, thoughts, and interpretations of those characters on events (past, ongoing, and prospective) in the storyworld in which they operate. And when they don’t speak? We might have difficulty reading them.
ART CogLit. Quoting from the project site, this research group conducts ‘empirical investigations of the observed reactions of real readers in order to test and extend hypotheses on ideal reading processes and reader responses...
Not everything in a narrative helps the reader’s transportation into a storyworld. Sometimes a narrator reminds us that we’re not actually there at all. A preliminary exploration of aitia in the Argonautica, considering how they might affect a reader’s immersion.