ABSTRACT
This chapter engages with Rainer Mühlhoff's theory of affective resonance and social interaction, extending it to the imaginative context of fiction reading. The immersion experience, analogous to the phenomena Mühlhoff describes as “a dynamic entanglement of moving and being-moved in relation” (Mühlhoff 2015), involves empathetic experiences evoked by fictional characters and features of imagined worlds. These are created by authors and brought to fruition by co-creating readers. The essay investigates structural similarities between human affective resonance and readers’ empathy. Drawing on my previous theorizing of co-creating readers’ various contributions to narrative empathy, I discuss affective components of reading fiction and narrative transportation.
