The Language of Engagement and the Projection of Storyworld Possible Selves in Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives

On how Fiction Impacts the Self-Concept: Transformative Reading Experiences and Storyworld Possible Selves

“…This linguistic anchoring is at the center of previous investigations of the theory of storyworld possible selves. Indeed, previous studies (Martínez, 2021;Martínez & Sánchez-Pardo, 2019) typically focus on close readings of literary texts by speculating about readers' possible elaborations on primary SPSs because they can be predicted from socio-cultural knowledge and shared values, such as the adventurer desired SPS in Melville's (1851) Moby Dick (Martínez, 2018). However, Martínez acknowledges that some SPSs, which she calls slipnets, are highly dependent on personal experience and thus cannot be predicted.…”