Empathy and Sympathy Learned from British and American Novels and Short Stories

Abstract

Foreign literature courses, including both British and American literature, serve as compulsory and core courses for Chinese English Majors (CEMs). Literature courses make CEMs grasp aesthetic meanings as well as immerses themselves in a literary world, most importantly empower them to access different cultural experiences, and experience ups and downs of fictional characters. This article mainly delineates empathetic and sympathetic factors inherent in English novels and short stories included in literary textbooks used in foreign literature classes, such as A Guide to History and Anthology of American Literature, A Guide to History and Anthology of British Literature, Selected Readings in American Literature, and Selected Readings in British Literature. Some novice teaching staff usually find that the assiduous efforts they have to put into the teaching of foreign literature class is due to limited academic duration, numerous writers, countless literary works, difficult literary languages, complicated character maps, exotic life experiences, as well as a range variety of students’ demands and interests. This article aims to find out empathy- and sympathy-themed excerpts from the above-mentioned textbooks to help novice literature teachers to accustom themselves to the teaching of the courses, and even to realize a favorable teaching result. The effective pedagogy includes pre-teaching, during-teaching and after-teaching. The examples of literary texts contain both American and British writers. The exemplified text genre includes novels and short stories. The academics in literature courses can follow the suggestions and endeavors mentioned in this paper to better guide their teaching activities.