Mimetic Narratives and the Poetics of Immersion

<jats:p>From ancient epics to television series and from novels to immersive documentaries, certain narratives transport us to a different world. This book explores the specificity of these mimetic narratives, where the audience is plunged into an “imaginary scene” in which characters take shape, time thickens, and the future remains open. Drawing on the latest research in cognitive, rhetoric, transmedial, and cultural narratology, Raphaël Baroni shows how mimetic narratives awaken our empathy and trigger suspense, curiosity, or surprise, and why they constitute a laboratory for ethical and existential experiences. This book is not just a theoretical contribution, it is a deep-dive into the social and emotional power of stories, sheddinglight on both our need for fiction and the force of certain factual narratives.</jats:p>