Exploring Ethical and Emotional Engagement with Postcolonial Suffering through a Reader-Response Analysis of Millennial Readers’ Literary Experiences
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Abstract
This study advances postcolonial literary research by focusing not on texts themselves but on how millennial readers personally experience narratives of colonial suffering. Employing an interpretative phenomenological approach with in-depth interviews of eight university-educated readers (aged 20–30), the research identifies four key themes: emotional resonance, ethical reflection, identity negotiation, and ethical literacy. The findings show that engagement with postcolonial fiction fosters critical self-reflection and moral awareness, highlighting literature’s role as a site of ethical transformation. By centering reader-response experiences, this study contributes novel insights into how postcolonial literature shapes moral consciousness and underscores the value of phenomenological inquiry for understanding the ethical dimensions of reading.
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