Multiple-Character Scenarios (MCSs) in Narrative Engagement

Based on the considerations of chapter 3 , this chapter introduces the central concept of the Multiple-Character Scenario (MCS), which describes the mental arrangements readers construct when confronted with complex constellations of characters. Employing the three-dimensions model developed in chapter 2 , taking cues from theories of embodied cognition, and integrating neurobiological evidence, the chapters argue that in establishing MCSs, readers resort to network-like spatial mappings and make essential use of image schemas and force dynamics to engage with the qualities of the relations between characters in such scenarios on the basic level; at the same time, further understanding will be generated on the mid- and high-consciousness levels of social experience and folk psychology that readers bring to their reading of a novel, in addition to literary knowledge. Connections between characters in the MCS can therefore be of a mimetic, thematic, and synthetic quality. The dynamics of MCSs construction are described as a continuous integration of local networks of small sets of characters dynamically foregrounded or backgrounded in reading. A main argument in this chapter is that even with foregrounded (sets of) characters, an awareness of their connections to other character groups remains latent in the reader’s mind, even if they are not currently addressed in the text.