MELODRAMA IN CONTEMPORARY YOUNG ADULT (YA) PROSE ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST: MAKING AN EMPATHETIC READER

Abstract

The article is devoted to issues of empathetic reader formation in YA prose about the Holocaust. These texts’ emotional impact has often been seen as additional and less critical. In the last decade, there has been a significant shift in the appreciation of children’s literature about the Holocaust as a tool for creating and cultivating empathy as a basis for creating a society in which sympathy and empathy become an essential part of everyday existence. This empathetic connection between the reader and the character in a literary work, understanding the behavior of one’s hero/heroine in extreme circumstances, and practicing empathy should become a new school of emotional maturation. Using the examples of novels by Dutch author Peter van Gestel and American writer R. J. Palacio, the article analyzes the stages by which narrative empathy is formed — from cognitive, empathy, based on knowledge of historical facts, to emotional empathy, which arises as the reader identifies with literary characters situated in a specific historical context. The characters’ personal history is described in the mode of melodramatic writing as a way of depicting a private, intimate space, creating an alternative model to describe the great cataclysms of the world around the young reader.

Keywords: Holocaust literature, adolescent literature, narrative empathy, empathic reader, melodramatic modality, emotional ekphrasis, cognitive narratology