Literature: the humanizing potential of the arts the most solitary of

Abstract

The essay examines the ethical, aesthetic and social developments of contemporary literature, conceived in a turbulent and imagetic world, which faces the dissolution of beliefs established in modernity and coexists with radically polarized ideas. In this context, writing and reading stand as humanizing acts, as they promote empathic movements for the constitution and understanding of the characters, enabling different forms of intersubjective connections. Considered the most solitary of the arts, literature is capable of bringing people together, improving their interpersonal relationships and breaking the individualism that characterizes postmodernity. In the books, the reader is faced with ethical models of the world, which allow the creation of meanings and the confrontation of the issues that cross human life and relationships. The writer, in its turn, is required to be altruistically sensitive to grasp the narratives of the real world and the people who inhabit it.