Emotion at fictional situations

My area of interest for my philosophy degree dissertation was the rationality or otherwise of experiencing emotions at fictional situations.

The underlying question for this topic is: given that in the 'real world', we seem to need to believe in the existence of a person or situation to feel genuine emotion towards the same, how can it be rational that we feel emotion whilst engaging in fiction?

I explored this with a particular focus on Colin Radford's 1975 paper, ‘How Can We Be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karenina?’.

My dissertation can be found here: https://jennyfaulkner.com/blog/dissertation-rationality-of-emotions-towards-fictional-characters/