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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 12/05/2013 21:31, Harvey Newstrom
wrote:<br>
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<div class="WordSection1"><font face="Calibri" size="2"
color="#1f497d"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Instead,
I think Lovecraft was more direct and insidious than that.
Lovecraft bypasses all but the briefest descriptions of the
fearful triggers. Instead, he jumps directly into
describing what fear itself feels like to the protagonist.
He spends more time directly describing what the protagonist
is feeling in response to the fear than describing what is
triggering that fear. I believe that this is a more direct
communication to the reader, telling the reader exactly what
to feel and how to feel, than the indirect communication
used by other authors to try to trigger those feelings in
the reader. I believe this is what makes Lovecraft a true
genius of the genre.</span></font><br>
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<br>
Triggering mirror neurons and other sympathy systems, no doubt. <br>
<br>
I think this is true, especially for simple core emotions - fear,
lust, anger and so on - where it would be enough to produce enough
of a similar state. More complicated emotions that involve
particular content (hate at some character, religious feeling,
appetite for rice, etc.) require far more footwork of the author,
who now needs to both provide the content and descriptions of how
the character experiences the emotion. If the reader can identify
well with the character and their context this might be easier since
they will help doing the work, but again this requires earlier good
writing. <br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Faculty of Philosophy
Oxford University </pre>
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