Embodied understanding of the grotesque in literature

The main purpose of this study was to explore embodied and emotional responses that may contribute to socio-cultural meaning-making and interpretation in literary readers when they encounter descriptions of grotesque characters. This investigation aims to add information and qualitative evidence to Caracciolo’s 2014 paper on embodied cognition and the grotesque. With this, explorations into the link between emotional responses and embodiment can be advanced. We aimed to link these emotional responses to the concept of empathy. In the present study, we aimed to measure participants’ responses to encounters with grotesque characters in literature. The latent — but more significant — aim of the present paper was to investigate the responses to characters that deviate from the norm. Indeed, all the characters are referred to as ‘grotesque’, following the tendency in literary writing. However, ‘grotesque’ in the present study is interchangeable with ‘disabled’. That is not because disabled people should be considered grotesque, but disabled literature points out that they are sometimes regarded as such. Put more strongly, this study is essentially an investigation into the responses to ‘other-bodiedness’. All the different experiences to the collective phenomenon of reading both texts could provide insight into the relationship between encountering bodies (in literature) that are different from our own. We did not expect to find clear answers based on the results yielded in this study — indeed, it being phenomenological it could only ever make suggestion for further research. Fundamentally, we hoped to put forward a more refined description of the aspect of literary reading about grotesque characters as to stimulate more advanced investigations of this phenomenon.