Books on the Psychology of Fiction at the Cinema and the Theatre

Since we introduced our list of books and micro-reviews on the psychology of fiction, we have added several more. In addition Bill Benzon has contributed a review of a book on the cognitive structure of comic-book fiction by Scott McCloud (1993), and Peter Sattler a review of a book on mental imagery in fiction by Elaine Scarry (1999).

It occurred to me that although our interests include the cinema and the theatre, our original list was without books on films, and there was only one on theatre, namely Aristotle's (330 BCE) Poetics. We have now remedied this defect to some extent by adding four books on the psychology of cinema: the influential book on the psychology of fiction films by Peter Bordwell (1985), and books by Murray Smith (1995), Ed Tan (1996), and Michael Ondaatje (2002). We have also added two on the psychology of theatrical acting by Konstantin Stanislavski (1936) and Elly Konijn (2000).

Although a number of people have kindly said that our list of books is helpful, I am aware that there are many gaps. Also, I am not a very fast reader. So, please suggest books and offer micro-reviews that we can add to the list, which can be accessed by clicking here.