Abstract

The article is dedicated to the phenomenon of the latent experiment with ‘reconstruction of empathy’ in D. F. Wallace’s works. The study focuses on the psychoanalytic session represented in the short story ‘Octet’ (its vignette entitled ‘Pop Quiz 6A’), used by Wallace to highlight the phenomenon of absent or fading empathy in contemporary humanity. The method of a psychoanalytic session, successfully applied to establish the psychopathic or non-empathic inclinations of the characters in ‘Octet,’ is an essential ingredient of modern literary discourse with its revision of postmodern constants and transition to metamodern trends. The article boasts an extensive bibliography, featuring works of literary criticism, studies of empathy, neuropsychology and neurobiology, emotions, the problem of human indifference, and bibliotherapy. In the conclusion of the analysis, the author argues that Wallace pioneered the type of literature concerned with reconstruction of deconstructed values and the return of the empathic literary hero.

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