”My heart was with Malin”: Mediation and Transformation in Fredrika Bremer’s The Neighbours. This article focuses on a scene in Fredrika Bremer’s 1837 novel, Grannarne (Th e Neighbours), investigating the relationship between reading aloud and empathy established in this work. It discusses the characters’ varied responses to the shared reading experience, utilising reception theory. In a follow-up discussion, I examine the feasibility of using newer theories concerning narrative empathy. Fritz Breithaupt’s theory is of particular interest since he suggests that second-level observation (and thus placing oneself in another person’s perspective) is central to the experience of empathy. Finally, I consider the emotional responses of the characters in relation to melodrama in Bremer’s work.

Due to developments in media technology, the textworlds of today are undergoing a series of rapid changes. The aim of this article is to suggest multimodal theory formation as a theory ofmeaning-making in schools, and to discuss the consequences regarding the way in which fiction is viewed in education. Meaning-making is considered a process wherein one acquires, but also changes and develops, experiences. In other words, meaning-making is regarded as a form of design. When meaning-making is considered as multimodal, nonhierarchical and ecological, this will necessarily impact our conception of fiction. The article draws on my doctoral thesis in which empirical material showed similarities in pupils’ meaning-making regardless of mode and media. Reading fiction plays a strong role in Swedish curriculum, but this role needs to be discussed and strongly problematized. Drawing on multimodal theory formation and discussions among contemporary literature scholars, the article does not support the conception of fictional literature as exclusive and special. Rather, the arguments used for fictional literature also apply to other modes of meaning-making in other media than the printed verbal text. Swedish steering documents show a lack of conceptual resources for understanding the processes of contemporary meaning-making. The article argues that the challenges presented by contemporary methods of meaning-making should be recognized in schools, and should lead to a questioning of the role of fiction in the Swedish curriculum. When using multimodal theory formation to understand contemporary communication, fiction is revealed as only one way, among others, to make meaning.