From literary immersion to fission-fusion aesthetics

What happens when we become immersed in a literary work? Literary immersion is commonly conceived of as ‘a state of forgetting language and losing oneself in the textual world’ (Ryan 2015: 136). Traditional notions are based on an either/or mode of understanding the mind’s engagement: it is either in a literary world or this one. Yet immersion heightens perceptions of the work, oneself and the world as aspects of the immersive process (Anderson and Iversen 2018). Recent scientific research invites an understanding of mind, self and world as fission-fusion concepts, entities, and processes (Anderson 2015a, 2023). Literary experiences, including immersive ones, are fission-fusion phenomena too. This chapter sets out scientific evidence combined with literary examples which illustrate the insights a fission-fusion perspective offers into the nature of literary experiences. Fission-fusion aesthetics has implications for how we do literary analysis and is a means of substantiating the value of literature, as well as helping us reflect on the use of the term immersion.