Chapter 2 - An Analysis of Perspective and Perspective Taking

Summary

In Chapter 2, we provide a critical review of how the terms “perspective” and “perspective taking” have been understood in both literary studies and social, personality, and cognitive psychology. We explain how current definitions of the term “perspective” and the process of “perspective taking” are too broad in what they implicitly encompass and we identify the components that should be excluded in the interest of clarity and precision. In this chapter, we also provide a conceptual and theoretical analysis of what perspective taking involves. In particular, we argue that a perspective is an interpretation of evaluations and that perspective taking depends on the construction of an analogy between the evaluations of the character and those of the reader. This analysis provides the background for our critiques of perspective taking in life and in literature in subsequent chapters.