Several quantitative studies (e.g. Kidd & Castano, 2013a;Djikic et al., 2013) have shown a positive correlation between literary reading and empathy. However, the literary nature of the stimuli used in these studies has not been defined at a more detailed, stylistic level. In order to explore the stylistic underpinnings of the hypothesized link between literariness and empathy, we conducted a qualitative experiment in which the degree of stylistic foregrounding was manipulated. Subjects (N = 37) read versions of Katherine Mansfield's 'The Fly', a short story rich in foregrounding, while marking striking and evocative passages of their choosing. Afterwards, they were asked to select three markings and elaborate on their experiences in writing. One group read the original story, while the other read a 'non-literary' version, produced by an established author of suspense fiction for young adults, where stylistic foregrounding was reduced. We found that the non-literary version elicited significantly more (p < 0.05) explicitly empathic responses than the original story. This finding stands in contradiction to widely accepted assumptions in recent research, but can be assimilated in alternative models of literariness and affect in literary reading (e.g. Cupchik et al., 1998). We present an analysis of the data with a view to offering more than one interpretation of the observed effects of stylistic foregrounding.

This article presents the design, methodology, and materials of an inter-Nordic, empirical study of literary reading among students in teacher education, in which relations between literary style and experiential aspects of literary reading (e.g. empathy and transportation) were assessed empirically. The primary aim of the article is to introduce paradigms and measures from interdisciplinary empirical research on literary reading which is less known in a Nordic context but which is rapidly gaining momentum internationally. The participants in the study read Katherine Mansfield's short story "The Fly" (1922) in the original version versus in a manipulated version in which typical features of literariness (e.g. metaphors and similes) were removed. Combining quantitative measures of empathy, appreciation of literature, and aspects of reading engagement with qualitative methods, the aim is to probe deeper into readers' subjective reading experience. K E Y W O R D S literariness, literary reading experience, qualitative methods, quantitative methods