ABSTRACT
Cognition, Literature, and History models the ways in which cognitive and literary studies may collaborate and thereby mutually advance. It shows how understanding of underlying structures of mind can productively inform literary analysis and historical inquiry, and how formal and historical analysis of distinctive literary works can reciprocally enrich our understanding of those underlying structures. Applying the cognitive neuroscience of categorization, emotion, figurative thinking, narrativity, self-awareness, theory of mind, and wayfinding to the study of literary works and genres from diverse historical periods and cultures, the authors argue that literary experience proceeds from, qualitatively heightens, and selectively informs and even reforms our evolved and embodied capacities for thought and feeling. This volume investigates and locates the complex intersections of cognition, literature, and history in order to advance interdisciplinary discussion and research in poetics, literary history, and cognitive science.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |79 pages
Kinds of (Literary) Cognition
chapter |14 pages
Reassessing the Concept of “Ideology Transfer”
part |55 pages
The Moral of the Story
chapter |19 pages
Maternity, Morality, and Metaphor
part |55 pages
Perceiving Others and Narrating Selves
chapter |16 pages
Fiction as a Cognitive Challenge
part |36 pages
A Culture of Science and a Science of Culture