CARTAGENA THINKS: Marta Benenti at Café Filosófico presents Why do fiction stories excite us? Cafeteria El Soldadito de Plomo

MARTA BENENTI

WHY DO WE ARE EXCITED BY FICTION STORIES?

Presented by: Vita Hernández, member of the Cartagena Piensa promotion group

We will consider the nature of the emotions generated by fictional stories. Are they genuine emotions, but the result of the illusion that immersion in the stories provokes? Or are they a special kind of affective state? What purpose do they serve? Are we right to cultivate them, or do we run the risk of sympathizing with evil characters? Do they contribute to the aesthetic value of literary works or are they a mere side effect of enjoyment?

Marta Benenti is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Murcia, where she is carrying out the LEAP project, on how we learned to appreciate aesthetic values. Previously, she held research and teaching positions at the Italian Academy (New York), the University and Polytechnic of Turin and the San Raffaele University (Milan) and at the University of Eastern Piedmont. She has published on the topics of expressiveness, emotions, the aesthetics of tourism, fiction and the perception of aesthetic values.