@article{jbp:/content/journals/10.1075/ssol.5.2.01jac, author = "Jacobs, Arthur M.", title = "The scientific study of literary experience: Sampling the state of the art", journal= "Scientific Study of Literature", year = "2015", volume = "5", number = "2", pages = "139-170", doi = "https://doi.org/10.1075/ssol.5.2.01jac", url = "https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/ssol.5.2.01jac", publisher = "John Benjamins", issn = "2210-4372", type = "Journal Article", keywords = "immersion", keywords = "aesthetics", keywords = "foregrounding", keywords = "neurocognitive poetics", keywords = "literary experience", abstract = "In this state-of-the-art review, I start with an illustrative example of behavioral data collected during the reading of a love poem reflecting one of many aspects that form the object of the Scientific Study of Literature, i.e., literary experience. A further section discusses key ingredients of literary experience, i.e., immersive and aesthetic processes. The paper’s core part analyses four recent representative empirical studies covering perspectives ranging from phenomenology to cognitive neuroscience. In the final sections, a number of critical theoretical and methodological issues are considered. Systematic research on the ontogeny of literary experiences is identified as a main desideratum of the field and further recommendations for the future scientific study of literature are proposed.", }