The article examines how three types of representation—artistic, mental, and neural—relate to immersion as an altered state of consciousness during literary reading. Immersive reading is defined as an intensification of the embodied experience of literary representation, drawing on neuropsychological studies of embodied cognition. The authors also consider the style of interpretation that immersive reading requires and its ethical and ecological foundations.
Susanne K. Langer's three-volume work 'Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling' (1967, 1972, 1982) presents a theory of consciousness rooted in feeling, symbolization, and Gestalt. Langer argues that human feeling is the fundamental basis of mind, and that symbolic processes—especially in art and language—emerge from organic, biological rhythms. Her work challenges the male-dominated consciousness research of her time by centering aesthetics and emotion rather than rational cognition. The text highlights Langer's bold entry into this field a century ago and notes that her final major work remains untranslated into German.