An obtuse and obvious post on 'literary effect'

In response to this post on ‘literature as literature’, a question was posed as to what we respond to when we respond to a literary text, and how we respond. What is the 'literary effect' (Deleuze speaks of 'a literary effect, as we speak of an electromagnetic effect') and is there some definable phenomenology of literary response? [I don't think these questions are the right ones, but that's for another post].

One very rudimentary response to this question, but one you get even from many literary critics, is that we are responding to some fictional representation of x just as we would respond to the actual situation. Of course we are moved by Hamlet because the situation of a young man grieving for his father is moving; we would be moved by this in 'real life' so of course we are moved by its adequate representation.

In this explanation there is no reference to anything specifically literary. The 'literary' disappears into the 'situation' represented. Of course, the argument goes, there is immense literary skill, but this lies in its self-erasure. We respond to the situation, and the success of the literary devices is precisely in being able to draw us into this situation without drawing attention on themselves.

This answer obviously falls short, first of all, in only applying to a fairly restricted kind of literary object – you can see how it works in relation to Hamlet, but not How it is. But even in the former case, there is an obvious sense in which we don't respond to a literary situation as we would respond to the analogous real situation. This may seem both obvious and obtuse, but here goes. If we met, in real life, someone grieving over the death of their father, simply sat in a corner weeping inconsolably, saying nothing, for hours and days, we would certainly be moved, upset, concerned etc. If we went to see a play entirely taken up with someone sat in a corner weeping inconsolably, we'd probably walk out. If, mentally, you transpose the real griever onto the stage, and subtract only the reality if his grief, so that there is no difference at the immediate perceptual level, the response is nonetheless utterly different. For what has been subtracted is only the knowledge that it is grief. Our aesthetic/ literary response is surely predicated on this 'subtraction'. Is not the literary effect precisely something freed up and enabled by the bracketing off, the cancellation of the ‘real’ response?

7/2 cf here.