75
Cognitive Foundations of Ethical Literary 
Studies1
Igor Žunkovič
Abstract
In the 1980s and 1990s, an ethical turn began to take place in literary studies and in 
the humanities in general, leading to an increased interest in exploring the relationship 
between literature and ethics. The field that deals with this topic is now called ethical 
literary studies or ethical criticism. One of the less explored areas of ethical literary stud-
ies is the relationship between ethics and cognitive aspects of reading. In this article, I 
therefore analyse the neurobiological foundations of literary reading. I consider reading 
as a technology consisting of various embodied mental, emotional, motor, sensory, mem-
ory and other cognitive processes. The temporal and spatial dimension of the processes, 
which I also call “openness”, is particularly important. The latter conditions the diversity 
of reading on an experiential level and, finally, the possibilities of the relationship between 
literature and ethics, namely in relation to literary characters, narratives, implicit and real 
authors and readers.
Keywords: cognitive literary studies, literary reading, diversity, ethical judgement, aes-
thetic judgement
1 The author acknowledges the financial support received from the Slovenian Research Agency (re-
search core funding No. P6-0265).
ACTA NEOPHILOLOGICA  UDK: 028:616.8:159.95
DOI: 10.4312/an.56.1-2.75-89
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76 Igor ŽunkovIč
INTRODUCTION
In the 1980s and 1990s, literary studies, like the humanities in general, experi-
enced the so-called “ethical turn”, by which, as Tomo Virk says, we mean a period 
when the study of the relationship between literature and ethics was in vogue, 
while the real problem is much broader and deeper, not only in time but also 
in disciplinary terms. We cannot talk about the terminology we use when we 
talk about ethics and literature without using a specific philosophical background 
(Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Emanuel Levinas, etc.; in Slovenia Anton Stres, Tine 
Hribar, Borut Ošlaj, etc.). At the same time, thematization in the broadest sense 
of the ethical in relation to literature can be traced back at least to Plato (his rejec-
tion of the existence of poets/poetry in the ideal state because of their corrupting 
influence on the young), not to mention the pedagogical use of literature as a 
moral model, which is as old as literature itself.
These are all important questions and dilemmas that literary scholars have 
grappled with both theoretically and historically. My current reflections are only 
a small, peripheral part of this “skein” (Virk 16), which, however, I believe, opens 
up a hitherto little explored area of ethical literary studies, namely the relationship 
between cognitive aspects of literary reading, ethics and morality. Although I am 
not concerned with terminological issues, now that we have the framework of the 
present considerations in mind, it is nevertheless necessary to mention (and partly 
explain) individual terminological choices.
In the article I first present the neurobiological aspect of reading literary texts. 
As a central characteristic, I emphasize the non-simultaneity – the temporal di-
mension – of reading and the potential recursiveness of cognitive processes in-
volved in reading. I describe this openness of reading at the neurobiological level 
as a source of diversity in reading, that is, as a source of different interpretations 
and effects that the same literary text can have on different readers and on the 
same reader during different readings. In the final step of the argumentation, I 
understand the potential diversity of reading as a condition for the possibility 
of literary ethics, not only because it represents a purely technical possibility of 
“choice”, but because of the cognitive “fullness” of reading literary texts.
In accordance with the Slovenian literary tradition affirmed by Virk, I use 
the terms ethics and morality in the following sense: “The impression is created 
that ethics as a philosophical discipline is a theoretical reflection on the condi-
tions of ethics and morality [...] and that morality as a discipline is a code or set 
of rules and instructions for moral action [...]” (Virk 15-16). On the other hand, 
my understanding of the term literature is more complex because I use it in the 
sense of a literary text – i.e., literature is a literary text – but also to refer to a 
group of literary texts that form a certain literary tradition, a certain genre, and 
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77Cognitive Foundations of Ethical Literary Studies
are oriented towards certain themes and the like. I am primarily concerned with 
the functioning of literary reading, which depends, on the one hand, directly on 
the characteristics of the individual text that the reader reads and, on the other 
hand, to the same extent on the characteristics of the texts that the reader has 
read in the past (habituation to genre rules), as well as on the personality traits 
of the reader and the characteristics of the specific reading context. Finally, in 
the context of the present article, literary reading is understood at the neuro-
cognitive level as a technology consisting of an ordered – but at the same time 
partially open – set of mental processes. The main focus of this definition is on 
the notion of “openness”, which turns out to be a condition for the possibility of 
ethical reading and ethical criticism.
COGNITIVE FOUNDATIONS OF READING
After explaining the choice of terms, I begin the content analysis of the topic 
under discussion with a brief overview of the neurocognitive aspects of reading. 
I speak of the neurocognitive aspects of reading in order to shed light on their 
neurobiological foundations – the emotional, mental, sensory, motor, thought 
and other mental processes involved in literary reading – and to justify the cog-
nitive effects of reading discussed in the older first-generation cognitive liter-
ary studies. We should always keep in mind that the neurobiological processes 
depend on the characteristics of the text, the personality traits of the reader 
and the specific reading context – this is the basis and the first postulate of the 
“openness” of literary reading.
That many experiential mechanisms play a role in reading is not surprising, as 
empirical studies have confirmed the predictions of literary scholars that there 
are many factors that influence reading. Anna Chesnokova et al. compared the 
reading of a literary text (poems) in four languages (Brazilian Portuguese, Eng-
lish, Ukrainian and Russian) in two cultural contexts (Ukraine and Brazil) and 
found that the comprehension of the poem read depends not only on individual 
differences between readers and differences between languages, but also on the 
cultural context of the readers. This means not only that literary reading should 
be explored at the level of literary universals, discursivity and even idiosyncratic 
features of readers and reading, but also that openness is reflected in one way or 
another in the way the human body functions when reading literature.
It is important to emphasize that “most neuroscientists do not see the pur-
pose of the human brain as being the construction of complicated cognitive 
representations. Rather, there is a relatively broad consensus [...] that the pur-
pose of the brain is to use sensory representations to determine future actions” 
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78 Igor ŽunkovIč
(Bornkessel-Schlesewsky et al. 608). The brain also works with such a general 
purpose in language use or reading, which of course does not mean that the cycles 
in visual (or auditory) perception (reading or listening to a literary text) are simple 
and unambiguous. Wandell and Le describe the way the brain works in reading 
as follows:
Retinal photoreceptors encode the image and then transform this encoding 
with multiple specialized neural circuits. Retinal ganglion cells project directly 
to the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) and via the superior colliculus to the 
pulvinar. The parvocellular (P), magnocellular (M), and koniocellular (K) layers 
of the LGN project to the V1 and extrastriate cortex. The visual regions within 
the pulvinar project mainly to the extrastriate cortex. These thalamic nuclei also 
receive many inputs from the cortex. [...] Posterior visual signals are transmitted 
to the auditory and language system (redoverlay, white text). Five general corti-
cal regions contain subdivisions that are consistently identified as active during 
reading: the VOT, which includes the visual word form area (VWFA); regions 
within the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), which appear to be a source of top-down 
modulation; regions near the primary auditory cortex in the superior temporal 
gyrus (STG), where adult dyslexics have low activation while integrating letters 
with speech sounds; and Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area, which are implicated 
in the comprehension and production of language. (Wandell and Le 299)
All this happens up to 300 ms after the stimulus is detected on the retina. In ad-
dition to these areas, there are all those that are not directly involved in language, 
but in processing the read data on a mental, emotional, motor and sensory level. 
The activation of these areas may depend on the reading method and the type 
of material read, as they may allow for more or less empathic experience, more 
or less immersion, reflection, and so on. All this happens up to half a second or 
a maximum of three seconds after the stimulus. This means that the processes of 
mirroring, emoting and remembering have about 200 ms to help shape the expe-
rience of what is read, of which the reader becomes aware.
There are “feedback loops” between conscious experience as cognitive processes 
and literary texts, “through which ‘experience shapes cultural practices’ even as 
‘cultural practices help the mind make sense of bodily experience’ [...] The struc-
tures of neural anatomy are limiting but not ultimately defining” (Armstrong 
408, 414). With regard to understanding the relationship between brain activity 
(neural firing) and experience (thinking and feeling), this means that experience 
shapes neural patterns through experiencing and learning, and that there are no 
universal and completely uniform maps of neural activations for any kind of expe-
rience. Stephen Nadeau says that the grammar we use is not inherently universal. 
It is based on the statistical regularities of our language experiences (summarized 
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79Cognitive Foundations of Ethical Literary Studies
in neural connectivity) that we have established through conversation and reading 
in relatively few human communities (Nadeau 164).
Reading is not done through a linear enumeration of signs, but through a pro-
cess of alternating progressions (saccades) and fixations. Progressions are usually 
jumps of attention in the direction of reading, and in 10–15% of cases regressions 
in the opposite direction, bringing attention back to the previous focal point. 
Focus or fixation points are found in 70 to 80% of words, and individual words 
may have more than one focus point. In this case, focus usually takes between 
200 and 250 ms. The time it takes for the eye to find a suitable fixation point (sac-
cade latency) and to prepare for movement or transition to that point is between 
175 and 200 ms. Movements last between 30 and 50 ms, and in between visual 
perception is temporarily suppressed (saccade suppression occurs 25 ms before 
movement to 50 ms after movement). “Because eye movements reflect ongoing 
lexical and higher-order linguistic processing during reading, it is important to 
understand the precise manner in which both types of processing relate to visual 
processing on the one hand and oculomotor control on the other” (Reichle and 
Sheridan 278).
This period of reading determines how reading takes place and how we experi-
ence it on several levels. The first level is consciousness. If we add up the duration 
of all the processes just mentioned, we get a duration of about half a second, which 
is exactly the time we need to become aware of the meaning of the text. Another 
level at which temporality determines reading is the amount of what is read. This, 
of course, determines the amount of words we can see in the focus phase. When 
reading, we see up to 14 parafoveal signs in the direction of reading and only three 
to five in the opposite direction. Two adjacent fixation points are therefore about 
10 characters apart. The speed of reading and the number of characters together 
determine the third level, the amount of data. It is particularly important that we 
can process the data in a short time. A smaller amount of data would mean slower 
reading, but much bigger problems would be caused by too much data that could 
not be processed efficiently in the limited time frame of half a second.
On the one hand, the time frame of reading is determined by the neurobio-
logical characteristics of visual perception. However, on the cognitive level, many 
brain areas are involved in reading, but not all of them in the same way, in the 
same order and with the same intensity. Only the asynchrony and potential recur-
siveness of mental, emotional and other bodily processes can be a possible basis 
for understanding the special effects of reading literature and especially narrative 
literature, which leads to a special kind of openness of reading at the level of brain 
activation. Phenomenologically speaking, this is the horizon of reading that can 
be expanded almost indefinitely through the possibility of changing the meaning 
of what is read in relation to subsequent information. The phenomenologist Paul 
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80 Igor ŽunkovIč
Buck Armstrong therefore emphasizes the importance of feedback loops between 
the domains involved in reading. This involves not only the basic possibility of 
consciously revising the meaning of what is read in the light of new information, 
but also the unconscious alteration of the perception of a particular aspect of the 
text’s content in the light of changing information about it.
FROM THE OPENNESS OF READING TO THE DIVERSITY 
OF READINGS
The multifaceted nature of reading as a technology is related to the fact that it in-
volves cognitive, emotional, memory and motor processes that are interconnected 
but do not constitute a processual monolith. The temporal asynchrony of these 
processes is a feature of reading that allows not only a multiplicity of possible 
connections between them, but above all their mutuality. This results in the possi-
bility of reading literary texts multiple times. However, the openness of reading is 
limited in three ways by the reading context: 1) by the personal characteristics of 
the readers, 2) by the historical, cultural, social and other circumstances of reading, 
and 3) by the characteristics of the text.
Literary scholars are interested in all three aspects. The first two are studied 
by sociological, positivist, cultural studies and various literary philosophical ap-
proaches, while the textual features are studied by genre studies, morphology and 
especially narratology. The elements that determine the reading of literary texts 
are thus diverse and range from motifs and themes to structural aspects of narra-
tives, narrators, points of view and everything that constitutes narratives. There are 
a number of textual elements that can function in a variety of interactions rather 
than having single effects. We assume that some phonetic devices contribute to 
the memorability of literary texts, but probably not all of them equally and at the 
same time not in all cases and in all texts. Rhyme in shorter lyric texts, unlike 
in ancient epics, probably does not have this effect. Nevertheless, at least three 
different levels can be distinguished on which the individual structural elements 
of literary texts can be located: the level of literarization (stylistic and linguistic 
procedures/elements), the level of fictionality and the level of narration (temporal 
structuring of texts, presence of events, cause-effect relationships between events, 
distinction between fable and plot, etc.). Finally, all three levels operate simulta-
neously, which means that, for example, a certain textual element – a rhyme – may 
function one way in a certain historical or linguistic context, but in a completely 
different way in another.
Wolfgang Iser states that “[t]he ability to perceive oneself during the process 
of participation is an essential quality of the aesthetic experience; the observer 
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81Cognitive Foundations of Ethical Literary Studies
finds himself in a strange, halfway position: he is involved, and he watches himself 
being involved” (134). Such an understanding of the effect of literary texts on the 
reader is taken as a starting point by David Miall and Don Kuiken (2013), who 
emphasize the importance of literary effects (foregrounding) at the level of style, 
which create an entrainment effect on which to base the emotional experience 
of the text. Keith Oatley (1994) and other members of a Toronto-based research 
group, following Oatley’s simulation theory, assume that the reader’s identifica-
tion with a literary character’s intentions and goals triggers sympathy with the 
literary character, and that the fullness of the empathic experience during literary 
reading results from the activity of filling in blanks “by which a reader supple-
ments given character traits with a fuller psychologically resonant portrait” (Keen 
217; see also Louwerse and Kuiken 170). Given the high degree of innovation in 
these and similar approaches, it is not unexpected that they have certain problems 
in replacing the individual effects and aspects of the texts they trigger. Due to 
the lack of neurocognitive experimental studies, as Keen particularly points out, 
these approaches cannot yet determine which aspect of the text triggers which of 
the possible effects: a higher or lower level of empathic experience, emotional or 
cognitive empathy, reflection and self-reflection, immersion or transport, identi-
fication, etc.
In one of the earlier studies, Mar et al. (2006) found that there was a correla-
tion between the amount of fiction read and empathy. This study was conducted 
with students and the Reading the Mind in the Eye (RME) test, i.e., identifying 
the mental states of people in photographs. However, this study did not examine 
the effects of reading – a causal relationship – but only a correlation, and it is 
not possible to determine whether reading fiction was actually the determining 
factor. Among the most important possible factors were the personality traits of 
the readers, since it was quite possible that more empathetic people read more 
and not vice versa. This relationship was also explored by the same authors Mar, 
Oatley and Peterson, in a study published three years later (2009) when they 
found that the results of the correlation between the RME test and the amount 
of fiction read did not depend on the main personality traits of the readers (us-
ing the Big Five test). However, this is only one of the possible influences on 
the relationship between empathy or empathic ability, human sociality and the 
reading of literary fiction. Given the distinction between cognitive and emo-
tional empathy, the researchers hypothesized that reading literary fiction might 
be associated with promoting cognitive empathy, but not emotional empathy. 
Mar et al. saw this very hypothesis as the basis for a better ability to recognize 
the emotional states of others exhibited by individuals who read more literary 
fiction (“Bookworms Versus Nerds”). However, all of these studies and hypoth-
eses are concerned with the long-term consequences of reading literary works, 
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82 Igor ŽunkovIč
which are difficult to separate from the influence of other behavioural and life-
style factors of the study participants.
Another aspect of studying the impact of reading literary fiction on people’s 
empathy and capacity for empathy is to examine “empathic responses to the read-
ing of particular fictional texts” (Bunce and Stansfield 10; Johnson 150). John 
Stansfield and Louise Bunce mention transportation/immersion as an important 
aspect of reading that directly affects empathy, or “the extent to which the reader 
is captivated by the characters, the processing of the story, and the imagery” (10). 
The relationship between immersion and emotional empathy has been explored 
by Dan Johnson (2012), who finds that “individuals who achieved higher levels of 
immersion in the story showed higher levels of emotional empathy toward literary 
characters” ( Johnson 154). Of particular interest is Johnson’s finding, a by-product 
of his research, that higher levels of empathy initially mean a tendency to rec-
ognize fear in people’s faces, even when they are not actually showing fear. One 
explanation for this phenomenon could be the evolutionary and neuroanatomical 
connection between the face recognition area – which, like the VWFA, is part of 
the network that processes reading – and the amygdala, where fear is processed. 
Matthijs Bal and Martijn Veltkamp (2013) also find that there is a link between 
immersion, emotional empathy and reading fiction. They compare reading fic-
tion and non-fiction, but not the effects of reading on emotional empathy and 
cognitive empathy. Stansfield and Bunce find that there is a correlation between 
higher levels of cognitive empathy at the personality trait level and the amount 
of reading of literary fiction, but it should be emphasized that most research does 
not demonstrate causality, and the influence of these effects on people’s real-life 
behaviour is not entirely clear, although Johnson notes that such an influence does 
exist ( Johnson 154).
Given the diversity of early cognitivist approaches to literary reading, drawing 
on phenomenological and other traditional literary theoretical directions, it is not 
surprising that early in the development of neurocognitive research on literary 
reception there was an attempt to systematize both the aspects of texts that have 
an effect and the typology of effects themselves. Eva Maria (Emy) Koopman and 
Frank Hakemulder point out various possible aspects of research on (empathic, 
reflexive) effects of literary texts, taking into account which narratological and 
morphological aspects of the texts we focus on. They distinguish between three 
basic domains of effects – literary, fictional and narrative – and three types of ef-
fects: empathic experience, self-reflection and stillness. They assume that all these 
aspects usually coexist in literary texts and that the effects of the text on the reader 
depend (among other things) on how they are combined.
Their systematization is interesting mainly because it explains the effects dur-
ing reading and the text features and possible different influences on the reader’s 
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83Cognitive Foundations of Ethical Literary Studies
behaviour in real life in an overly analytical way. This redundancy, characterized 
by bidirectional relationships between individual text features, reading features 
and effects of reading on behaviour, often overlaps so that individual aspects of 
reading may not even be fully distinguishable and different types of reading may 
have different features. Texts have similar effects on the extent to which reading 
influences personality traits and thus the reader’s everyday life.
OPENNESS OF READING2 IS THE CORNERSTONE OF 
LITERARY ETHICS
Reading literary works is an activity that demands a certain level of engagement 
from the reader and has corresponding effects. When these effects are no longer 
understood on a personal and individual level, the effects considered must also 
be transferred to a more abstract, collective level and explained as a social phe-
nomenon. Virk gives an excellent critical overview of the discussion of ethics and 
literature in the history of literary studies. He explains which fields of discussion 
on literary ethics exist at all. Literary ethics from the perspective of neurocogni-
tive literary studies focuses on literary reading. Although I foreground this, it is 
not the only way to discuss literary ethics in relation to neurocognitive literary 
studies. Another example I briefly touch on here is narrative ethics. While Virk 
points to the important distinction between the ethics of narrative and the ethics 
of storytelling, noting that Phelan’s adherence to narratological premises “does 
not add much value as far as the question of ethics is concerned” (Virk 130). At 
the same time, in analysing Phelan’s reading of Robert Frost’s poem “Home Bur-
ial”, he points to an interesting connection between the narratological distinction 
between the implied and the real author and, if I may generalize, the “indecision” 
of the reading. The connection is interesting in the light of the analysis of literary 
bibliotherapy by Davor Piskač, who links this difference to the possibility of a 
special bibliotherapeutic function mediating between the implicit experience of a 
literary person’s feelings, thoughts, desires and beliefs when reading a literary text 
(empathy, ToM) and the real life of the reader. This is the message of the book:
The literary character and his or her needs are the focus of consideration from 
the point of view of aesthetic, cultural and psychological functions. Thanks to 
the function of bibliotherapy, the experience of the characters becomes a real 
life experience. We can see what the character could represent in “real” life and 
2 I wrote on diversity and reading in much greater depth in “Diversity in reading” (soon to be pub-
lished by Cambridge Scholars in the volume Wording Otherness) from which I draw a part of the 
present considerations on the link between diversity and ethics in reading.
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84 Igor ŽunkovIč
what needs he or she has as a living person. The bibliotherapeutic function thus 
transform a literary character into a real person. (Piskač 122)
The bibliotherapeutic function of reading, as understood by Piskač, emphasizes 
the difference – which Phelan understands as a consequence of narrativity – be-
tween the level of narration (literary characters, time, protagonist, story) and the 
level of telling/reading (what the real author and reader bring to the reading situa-
tion), but Piskač approaches it from the opposite direction. For Phelan the key lies 
in the relatively general and abstract connection between the narratological view 
of literature and ethical judgement or evaluation: simply put, it is important that 
we first “understand” what is happening at the level of narrative, only then can we 
evaluate it properly (Phelan 13). From the therapeutic perspective the advantage 
of literary reading is the safe space created by the fictionality of the text, in which 
the traumatic situation does not happen to the reader but to a literary charac-
ter, because aim of bibliotherapy is the solution of a certain mental or emotional 
problem by the reader or simply spiritual growth and development. The example 
of bibliotherapy clearly shows that the prerequisite for the reader’s evaluation of 
the “nature” of a literary text on the narrative level is the openness of literary 
reading on the cognitive level – that the text has the potential to evoke certain 
emotions, feelings and thoughts – but that at the same time this is not sufficient 
to explain the relationship between ethics and literature.
The question of ethics in literature and the ethics of literary reading is a fun-
damental question of the social consideration of the effect of literary reading. 
Only on the basis of the values established by ethics can the reading of literature 
be defined as good or bad, and as an activity that is free and completely detached 
from social and individual consequences. In this context, the discussion of what 
is permitted and what is not, what is good and what is bad in an ethical sense, 
is to be distinguished from the question of what is beautiful or ugly, and from 
the question of what is aesthetically appropriate, pleasant and right and what is 
not. In the history of literary studies these questions often overlap, and in the 
work of individual theorists (Wayne Booth, Wolfgang Mueller, James Phelan, 
etc.) literary ethics and aesthetics can merge. Phelan, for example, writes in his 
“thesis seven” in the introduction to his book Experiencing Fiction that “individual 
reader’s ethical and aesthetic judgements significantly influence each other, even 
as the two kinds of judgements remain distinct and not full dependent on each 
other” (Phelan 14). Virk notes that the conflation of the ethical and the aesthetic 
in literature “is problematic even at the principled level, especially when it takes 
the form that ethical or moral lapses in literary works are also aesthetic” (Virk 94).
From the perspective of neurocognitive literary studies, the importance of 
grounding a possible overlap between the two areas of engagement with literature 
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85Cognitive Foundations of Ethical Literary Studies
cannot be overlooked. Aesthetic analysis relies not only on the reader’s subjective 
assessment, but also on the criteria of how the text functions – whether it serves 
its purpose, whether it works, and whether it evokes aesthetic feelings. Texts that 
are well organized and beautifully written function and fulfil their purpose. Thus, 
a literary text can address ethical dilemmas, even the origin of good and evil and 
the transcendent justification of human behaviour, but at the level of the ethics of 
literary reading, it only works if it succeeds in transferring these dilemmas to the 
reader by provoking thought. It succeeds in this, among other things, if it is well 
written and has a high aesthetic value.
Of course, this kind of thinking is not peculiar to the neurocognitive approach 
to literature, nor does it signify anything particularly new or groundbreaking. The 
attitude to these questions justifies both the educational and the therapeutic use 
of literature, so that the contribution of literary studies is crucial in both cases and 
perhaps somewhat neglected in practise. Literature and other arts are always one 
step ahead of theory. Therefore, people have been using literature for therapeutic 
purposes long before psychologists, therapists and literary theorists started dis-
cussing bibliotherapy in the late 20th century, not to mention the educational use 
of literature. Neurocognitive literary studies can contribute to these the discus-
sions on ethics and literature in two ways.
First, it reveals the mechanisms of experience that constitute literary reading. 
These mechanisms include linguistic, emotional, motor and memory processing 
and function, as well as whole-body response. The reading of literary fiction is 
experienced more fully, comprehensively and deeply than the reading of non-fic-
tion texts, due to the effect of stillness that catalyses cognitive processes such as 
immersion, empathy, ToM (Theory of Mind), literary identification, reflection, 
and so on. In my opinion, this fullness is also the basis for aesthetic emotions 
such as appreciation, respect, admiration, etc., which are an important part of 
the aesthetic evaluation of the text. Only on the basis of understanding how our 
experience works when reading (embodiment) can we explain, for example, the 
fact that texts that evoke sadness are usually perceived as aesthetically better than 
those that evoke joy.
Second, neurocognitive literary studies uncover patterns of experience that 
ground the actions of literary characters and the reader’s relationship to them. In a 
literary text the narrator’s world may be similar to the reader’s in moral and ethical 
terms, but it may also be markedly different from their contours. In both cases it is 
possible to analyse the justification of their actions on a neurocognitive basis and 
define not only alternative patterns of thought and experience, but also alternative 
moral and ethical systems. What readers experience through embodied cognitive 
processes during literary reading are not only the various personality traits, desires, 
intentions and goals of the literary characters, but also of the implicit author and, 
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86 Igor ŽunkovIč
not least, of the implicit reader, as determined by intratextual references to them: 
e.g., choice of theme, narrative strategies, narrator, etc. Through the communica-
tion of all these elements as realized through reading, the instances of the literary 
person on the one hand and the reader on the other are potentially always exposed 
to reflection on what is right in the narrative or real world, but also on what is 
good for a literary person or reader. In both cases, the neurocognitive view implies 
neither an aesthetic nor an ethical judgement of literary reading, but a possible area 
of their encounter. Aesthetic reasons may be those that justify the ethical function 
of literary reading – for example, the arousal of prosocial emotions and altruistic 
behaviour in the reader – and based on ethical reasons a literary text may be con-
sidered inappropriate in the aesthetic sense. What is essential is that the embod-
ied cognitive experience that grounds both the ethical and the aesthetic consists 
of unconscious bodily processes (which are largely prosocial and intersubjective), 
conscious reflection and the reading situation, which includes, among other things, 
the properties of the medium of reading. From the perspective of neurocognitive 
literary studies, then, the openness of reading as a technology on the neurobiologi-
cal level is a condition for both the ethical and aesthetic evaluation of literary texts 
and logically – but not practically – precedes the effect of any structural features of 
literary texts. It seems that there is a third link in the dyadic relationship between 
the narrative and the narration, or, in other words, between the literary person and 
the reader, which Phelan hints at but does not fully demonstrate or infer. The situ-
ation can be described with the help of the hermeneutic circle. Reading literary and 
narrative literary texts provides the reader with access to different mental worlds of 
literary characters, which are constructed through the concrete reading of charac-
ters in a particular time and space, and based on which the reader then forms his or 
her own judgements about characters, stories, texts and implicit and real authors. 
But at the same time reading is based on embodied and overt emotional, mental, 
motor, sensory and other processes that are unconscious and that take place before 
we as readers access the meanings of texts on a more abstract, reflexive level, namely 
either in relation to the literary characters and their narrative worlds or in relation 
to the reader’s multi-level ethical (and also aesthetic) evaluation of the literary text.
To what extent the openness of embodied experiential processes, i.e., motor, 
mental, thought, emotional and others, affects the ethics of literary reading is a 
question to which I have no answer. Equally difficult to answer is the extent to 
which the ethics of literary reading are influenced by the various cultural, social, 
educational, psychological, and other circumstances in which people read and act. 
However, the central insight of neurocognitive literary studies in relation to the 
ethics of reading is that neither ethical reflection nor moral decision-making are 
based solely on an abstract moral law, but on the embodiment of experience, and 
that the converse is also true: whatever open embodied experience means at the 
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87Cognitive Foundations of Ethical Literary Studies
neurocognitive level, the ethics of reading is not determined by it. Indeed, it sim-
ply does not exist at this level. We should perhaps follow LeDoux’s observation 
that it is not activity in the amygdala that triggers fear, but the body’s defence sys-
tem, which is then consciously conceptualized as fear. The point of literature is not 
that it triggers a defence mechanism, but that we experience “fear” through it, but 
only by understanding the defence mechanism can we grasp the full meaning of 
“fear”. The openness of reading as a technology gives rise to the diversity of read-
ings of literary texts, i.e., the diversity of interpretations, experiences, and ethical 
reflections. The openness of reading is therefore the cornerstone of literary ethics.
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Igor Žunkovič
University of Ljubljana
igor.zunkovic@ff.uni-lj.si 
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89Cognitive Foundations of Ethical Literary Studies
Kognitivni temelji etične literarne vede
V osemdesetih in devetdesetih letih prejšnjega stoletja se je v humanistiki in literarni vedi 
zgodil etični obrat, ki pomeni povečanje zanimanja za raziskovanje razmerja med literatu-
ro in etiko. Danes ta del literarne vede imenujemo etično kritištvo ali etična literarna veda. 
Eno od slabše raziskanih področij etičnega kritištva je razmerje med etiko in kognitivnimi 
vidiki branja. Zato v tem članku analiziram nevrobiološke podlage branja. Branje razu-
mem kot tehnologijo, utemeljeno na številnih utelešenih miselnih, čustvenih, motoričnih, 
senzoričnih, spominskih in drugih kognitivnih procesih. Časovno-prostorska dimenzija 
teh procesov, ki jo imenujem odprtost, je posebej pomembna. Na izkustveni ravni namreč 
pogojuje raznolika branja, nazadnje pa tudi pogoje možnosti vzpostavljanja razmerja med 
literaturo in etiko, in sicer skozi razmerja do literarnih oseb, pripovedi in implicitnih ter 
realnih avtorjev in bralcev.
Ključne besede: kognitivna literarna veda, literarno branje, raznolikost, etične sodbe, 
estetske sodbe
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