The Power (?) of Literature: A Neuropsychological View

Literature shows its apparent power when we are "absorbed" in a literary experience: Coleridge's "willing suspension of disbelief." We do not sense our bodies or our environment. We cease to judge the reality or probability of events. And we feel real emotions toward people and things we know are fictions. Our sensory and emotional systems behave in this special way because our "disinterested" stance toward works of art inhibits the brain's action systems to which these other systems are linked. Literature has power over us only if it has no power.