Representation of character experience: language choices and similative construal

This paper discusses examples from modernist and contemporary fiction, focusing on two experiential areas – the experience of the flow of time and the felt quality of events and emotions. It proposes a more specific understanding of the role played by figurative imagery, speech representation, and accounts of sensory perception, which can jointly be referred to as modes of representing character experience . The examples selected for analysis go beyond unmarked depictions of actions or events. Rather, they depict narrative scenes where the high intensity of experience calls for language choices going beyond representing ordinary acts and scenes. To account for the experiential intensity of the texts referred to I propose a broad type of figuration, which I refer to as similative . The examples of similative construal discussed in the paper illustrate how textual choices build on representations of attention, fictive events, and fictive conversations in order to render character experiences – embodied, emotional, or both.