Contents -- 0 Introduction -- 0.1 Out of Which Hat -- 0.2 Why Experience, and Why This Book -- 0.3 Why This Book Is Not an Empirical Study -- 0.4 Cognitive Science: A Thumbnail Sketch -- 0.4.1 From Computational Models to Enactivism -- 0.4.2 Conceptual Thought and Embodiment -- 0.4.3 The Self, Folk Psychology, and Phenomenology -- 0.5 Outline of Chapters -- Part I: Notes for a Theory of Experientiality -- 1 Not So Easy: Representation, Experience, Expression -- 1.1 From Representation to Expression -- 1.2 On Characters' Experiences -- 1.3 Expressive Devices -- 2 The Existential Burn: Storytelling and the Background -- 2.1 The Network of Experientiality -- 2.2 Focus on the Experiential Background -- 2.2.3 Opening Moves -- 2.2.3 Mapping the Background -- 2.2.3 Narrative and the Background -- 3 Experience, Interaction, and Play in Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch -- 3.1 Dewey and Winnicott on Experience -- 3.2 A Third Possibility -- 3.3 Other Paths: Beyond Vertical Transcendence -- 3.4 Bringing the Strands Together -- Part II: From Experiential Traces to Fictional Consciousnesses -- 4 Blind Reading: Bodily and Perceptual Responses to Narrative -- 4.1 The Enactivist Theory of Experience -- 4.2 Enacting Narrative Space -- 4.3 Enacting Characters' Bodily-Perceptual Experiences -- 4.4 Enacting Qualia Through Metaphorical Language -- 5 Fictional Consciousnesses: From Attribution to Enactment -- 5.1 Consciousness-Attribution -- 5.2 Enacting Benjy: A Slow-Motion Analysis -- 5.3 Consciousness-Enactment -- 5.3.1 What Is Consciousness-Enactment? -- 5.3.2 Triggers of Consciousness-Enactment -- 5.3.3 Mental Simulation as the Cognitive Basis for Consciousness- Enactment -- 6 Fictional Consciousnesses: Self-Narratives and Intersubjectivity -- 6.1 Narrative Selves? -- 6.2 Focus on Self-Narratives.

6.3 Engaging with Characters: Between Primary and Secondary Intersubjectivity -- 6.4 Readers and Characters in Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach: A Case Study -- Part III: Embodied Engagements and Their Effects -- 7 Embodiment, Virtuality, and Meaning in Readers' Reconstruction of Narrative Space -- 7.1 From Mental Simulation to Fictionalization -- 7.2 Fictional Anchors: Forster's Deputy Focalizor and "Strict" Focalization -- 7.3 Virtual Presences: "Empty Center" and Aperspectival Texts -- 7.4 A Scale of Fictionalization -- 7.5 The Embodied Self and Beckett's Company -- 8 Mental Myopia: Narrative Patterns and Experiential Texture in Vladimir Nabokov's The Defense -- 8.1 From Chess Consciousness to Experiential Blindness -- 8.2 The Moves of His Life -- 8.3 Beyond? -- 8.4 Three Functions of Narrative: Overreading The Defense -- 9 Conclusion: Where to Go from Here? -- Works Cited -- Index.