ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines two approaches to the issue of literariness and point to neuropsychological studies that may help illuminate its components. In a literary context, such as the encounter with foregrounding, it seems likely that feeling would provide the primary vehicle for developing an interpretation of foregrounded elements. The chapter presents an aesthetics that builds in important respects on several essays in this area, including neuropsychological contributions by Julie Kane and Raymond Mar. The mirror-neurons finding thus also provides a mechanism for helping to understand social cognition, the Theory of Mind module that enables us to read others' minds. The neuropsychological work reported here supports the theorized function of foregrounding in literary response, suggesting that right hemisphere processes facilitate a reconceptualization, analogous to the solution of an insight problem that occurs downstream from the initial response. Evidence for the role of mirror neurons during reading, and their activation of empathic and other affective responses, is available from several studies.
