By taking an interdisciplinary approach - with methods drawn from narratology, aesthetics, social psychology, education, and the empirical study of literature - The Art of Sympathy in Fiction will interest scholars in a variety of fields. Its focus is the sympathetic effects of stories, and the possible ways these feelings can contribute to what has been called the "moral imagination." Part I examines the dynamics of readers' beliefs regarding fictional characters and the influence of those impressions on the emotions that readers experience. The book then turns its attention to sympath