EMPATHIZING WITH BARNES’S WOODWORM: A RETELLING OF NOAH’S ARK

By co-opting a cognitive neuroscientific approach, this article investigates how the theories of the embodied mind and embodied simulation shed light on the way readers empathize with nonhuman characters in narratives, and what narrative strategies authors employ to enable readers’ empathic engagement with them. Challenging the Cartesian mind-body dualism, the embodied mind theory posits that the mind works in tandem with the body, and cognitive processes are shaped by the body’s interactions with the world. Embodied simulation theory puts forward that when people witness others performing actions, experiencing emotions, encountering situations, the mirror neurons in their brains simulate those experiences as if they were performing or experiencing them themselves. That simulative experience also occurs while reading a narrative, or watching a theatrical performance or a film, or examining an artwork. The embodied simulation, in this sense, discloses how readers/recipients empathize with imaginary characters through the mirroring mechanism. Within this theoretical context, this article concentrates on the narrative techniques in Julian Barnes’s A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (1989) that promote or hinder empathy with the animal narrator, the Woodworm. Consequently, this study argues for the potential of narratives to evoke readers’ trans-species empathic engagement.