Michael Burke and Emily T. Troscianko (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190496869
- eISBN:
- 9780190496883
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190496869.001.0001
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Psycholinguistics / Neurolinguistics / Cognitive Linguistics
This book brings together researchers with cognitive-scientific and literary backgrounds to present innovative research in all three variations on the possible interactions between literary studies ...
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This book brings together researchers with cognitive-scientific and literary backgrounds to present innovative research in all three variations on the possible interactions between literary studies and cognitive science. The tripartite structure of the volume reflects a more ambitious conception of what cognitive approaches to literature are and could be than is usually encountered, and thus aims both to map out and to advance the field. The first section corresponds to what most people think of as ‘cognitive poetics’ or ‘cognitive literary studies’: the study of literature by literary scholars drawing on cognitive-scientific methods, findings, and/or debates to yield insights into literature. The second section demonstrates that literary scholars need not only make use of cognitive science to study literature, but can also, in a reciprocally interdisciplinary manner, use a cognitively informed perspective on literature to offer benefits back to the cognitive sciences. Finally, the third section, ‘literature in cognitive science’, showcases some of the ways in which literature can be a stimulating object of study and a fertile testing ground for theories and models, not only to literary scholars but also to cognitive scientists, who here engage with some key questions in cognitive literary studies with the benefit of their in-depth scientific knowledge and training.Less
This book brings together researchers with cognitive-scientific and literary backgrounds to present innovative research in all three variations on the possible interactions between literary studies and cognitive science. The tripartite structure of the volume reflects a more ambitious conception of what cognitive approaches to literature are and could be than is usually encountered, and thus aims both to map out and to advance the field. The first section corresponds to what most people think of as ‘cognitive poetics’ or ‘cognitive literary studies’: the study of literature by literary scholars drawing on cognitive-scientific methods, findings, and/or debates to yield insights into literature. The second section demonstrates that literary scholars need not only make use of cognitive science to study literature, but can also, in a reciprocally interdisciplinary manner, use a cognitively informed perspective on literature to offer benefits back to the cognitive sciences. Finally, the third section, ‘literature in cognitive science’, showcases some of the ways in which literature can be a stimulating object of study and a fertile testing ground for theories and models, not only to literary scholars but also to cognitive scientists, who here engage with some key questions in cognitive literary studies with the benefit of their in-depth scientific knowledge and training.
Suzanne Keen
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195175769
- eISBN:
- 9780199851232
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195175769.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This book presents an account of the relationships among novel reading, empathy, and altruism. Though readers' and authors' empathy certainly contribute to the emotional resonance of fiction and its ...
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This book presents an account of the relationships among novel reading, empathy, and altruism. Though readers' and authors' empathy certainly contribute to the emotional resonance of fiction and its success in the marketplace, this book finds the case for altruistic consequences of novel reading inconclusive. It offers instead a detailed theory of narrative empathy, with proposals about its deployment by novelists and its results in readers. The book engages with neuroscience and contemporary psychological research on empathy, bringing affect to the center of cognitive literary studies' scrutiny of narrative fiction. Drawing on narrative theory, literary history, philosophy, and contemporary scholarship in discourse processing, the book brings together resources and challenges for the literary study of empathy and the psychological study of fiction reading. Empathy robustly enters into affective responses to fiction, but its proper role in shaping the behavior of emotional readers has been debated for three centuries. The book surveys these debates and offers a series of hypotheses about literary empathy, including narrative techniques inviting empathetic response. It argues that above all readers' perception of a text's fictiveness increases the likelihood of readers' empathy, by releasing readers from their guarded responses to the demands of real others. The book confirms the centrality of narrative empathy as a strategy, as well as a subject, of contemporary novelists. Despite the disrepute of putative human universals, novelists from around the world endorse the notion of shared human emotions when they overtly call upon their readers' empathy. Consequently, the book suggests, if narrative empathy is to be better understood, women's reading and popular fiction must be accorded the respect of experimental inquiry.Less
This book presents an account of the relationships among novel reading, empathy, and altruism. Though readers' and authors' empathy certainly contribute to the emotional resonance of fiction and its success in the marketplace, this book finds the case for altruistic consequences of novel reading inconclusive. It offers instead a detailed theory of narrative empathy, with proposals about its deployment by novelists and its results in readers. The book engages with neuroscience and contemporary psychological research on empathy, bringing affect to the center of cognitive literary studies' scrutiny of narrative fiction. Drawing on narrative theory, literary history, philosophy, and contemporary scholarship in discourse processing, the book brings together resources and challenges for the literary study of empathy and the psychological study of fiction reading. Empathy robustly enters into affective responses to fiction, but its proper role in shaping the behavior of emotional readers has been debated for three centuries. The book surveys these debates and offers a series of hypotheses about literary empathy, including narrative techniques inviting empathetic response. It argues that above all readers' perception of a text's fictiveness increases the likelihood of readers' empathy, by releasing readers from their guarded responses to the demands of real others. The book confirms the centrality of narrative empathy as a strategy, as well as a subject, of contemporary novelists. Despite the disrepute of putative human universals, novelists from around the world endorse the notion of shared human emotions when they overtly call upon their readers' empathy. Consequently, the book suggests, if narrative empathy is to be better understood, women's reading and popular fiction must be accorded the respect of experimental inquiry.
Karin Kukkonen
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- March 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190634766
- eISBN:
- 9780190634780
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190634766.003.0002
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Psycholinguistics / Neurolinguistics / Cognitive Linguistics
This chapter connects neoclassical criticism with today’s cognitive approaches to literature conceptually by introducing the notion of “situational logic,” derived from Karl Popper. For a literary ...
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This chapter connects neoclassical criticism with today’s cognitive approaches to literature conceptually by introducing the notion of “situational logic,” derived from Karl Popper. For a literary text, the situational logic refers to the world, characters, and actions of the narrative. Its shape can be described by the neoclassical rules, which cover different dimensions of the narrative and create its overall vraisemblance. Different choices for this situational logic are always possible and will be discussed in relation to alternative versions of the main narratives in the case studies. In addition, the chapter introduces the key cognitive approaches as they correspond to the overarching neoclassical model of literature and interact with each other in the framework of situational logic. Finally, this chapter addresses the historical context from which the texts emerge.Less
This chapter connects neoclassical criticism with today’s cognitive approaches to literature conceptually by introducing the notion of “situational logic,” derived from Karl Popper. For a literary text, the situational logic refers to the world, characters, and actions of the narrative. Its shape can be described by the neoclassical rules, which cover different dimensions of the narrative and create its overall vraisemblance. Different choices for this situational logic are always possible and will be discussed in relation to alternative versions of the main narratives in the case studies. In addition, the chapter introduces the key cognitive approaches as they correspond to the overarching neoclassical model of literature and interact with each other in the framework of situational logic. Finally, this chapter addresses the historical context from which the texts emerge.
Terence Cave
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198749417
- eISBN:
- 9780191817328
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198749417.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This ‘virtual manifesto’ outlines a programme for future directions in cognitive literary study, defining its objectives and emphasizing the key notion of ‘thinking with literature’: literature as an ...
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This ‘virtual manifesto’ outlines a programme for future directions in cognitive literary study, defining its objectives and emphasizing the key notion of ‘thinking with literature’: literature as an instrument of cognition for writers, readers and critics.Less
This ‘virtual manifesto’ outlines a programme for future directions in cognitive literary study, defining its objectives and emphasizing the key notion of ‘thinking with literature’: literature as an instrument of cognition for writers, readers and critics.
Karin Kukkonen
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190913045
- eISBN:
- 9780190913076
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190913045.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter challenges the assumption that throughout history the novel gets progressively better at realism and at matching its language in cognitive processes. It characterises this assumption as ...
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This chapter challenges the assumption that throughout history the novel gets progressively better at realism and at matching its language in cognitive processes. It characterises this assumption as “the curse of realism,” which retroactively imposes standards from the nineteenth-century novel onto texts from earlier periods and evaluates them as lacking stylistic and narrative achievements that they never aimed for. A counter-model, based on embodied cognition and predictive, probabilistic cognition, is proposed. This allows cognitive approaches to literature to move away from a teleological perspective (where the novel improves its match with cognition) and towards a dialectic perspective (where literary texts can relate to cognition in ways that are not inherently more accurate than others). This chapter lays the overall theoretical foundations for the case studies in the following chapters.Less
This chapter challenges the assumption that throughout history the novel gets progressively better at realism and at matching its language in cognitive processes. It characterises this assumption as “the curse of realism,” which retroactively imposes standards from the nineteenth-century novel onto texts from earlier periods and evaluates them as lacking stylistic and narrative achievements that they never aimed for. A counter-model, based on embodied cognition and predictive, probabilistic cognition, is proposed. This allows cognitive approaches to literature to move away from a teleological perspective (where the novel improves its match with cognition) and towards a dialectic perspective (where literary texts can relate to cognition in ways that are not inherently more accurate than others). This chapter lays the overall theoretical foundations for the case studies in the following chapters.
Isabel Jaen and Julien Jacques Simon (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190256555
- eISBN:
- 9780190256579
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190256555.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature is the first anthology exploring human cognition and literature in the context of early modern Spanish culture. It includes the leading voices ...
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Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature is the first anthology exploring human cognition and literature in the context of early modern Spanish culture. It includes the leading voices in the field, along with the main themes and directions that this important area of study has been producing. The book begins with an overview of the cognitive literary studies research that has been taking place within early modern Spanish studies over the last fifteen years. Section II traces the creation of self in the context of the novel, focusing on Cervantes’ Don Quixote in relation to the notions of embodiment and autopoiesis as well as the faculties of memory and imagination as understood in early modernity. Section III illustrates how the concept of embodiment is especially pertinent to delve into the mechanics of the interaction between actors and audience both in the jongleuresque and the comedia traditions. Section IV centers on cognitive theories of perception, the psychology of immersion in fictional worlds, and early modern and modern-day notions of intentionality to discuss the role of perceiving and understanding others in performance, Don Quixote, and courtly conduct manuals. Section V focuses on the affective dimension of audience–performer interactions in the theatrical space of the Spanish corrales and how emotion and empathy can inform new approaches to presenting Las Casas’ work in the literature classroom. The volume closes with an afterword offering strategies to design a course on mind and literature in early modernity.Less
Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature is the first anthology exploring human cognition and literature in the context of early modern Spanish culture. It includes the leading voices in the field, along with the main themes and directions that this important area of study has been producing. The book begins with an overview of the cognitive literary studies research that has been taking place within early modern Spanish studies over the last fifteen years. Section II traces the creation of self in the context of the novel, focusing on Cervantes’ Don Quixote in relation to the notions of embodiment and autopoiesis as well as the faculties of memory and imagination as understood in early modernity. Section III illustrates how the concept of embodiment is especially pertinent to delve into the mechanics of the interaction between actors and audience both in the jongleuresque and the comedia traditions. Section IV centers on cognitive theories of perception, the psychology of immersion in fictional worlds, and early modern and modern-day notions of intentionality to discuss the role of perceiving and understanding others in performance, Don Quixote, and courtly conduct manuals. Section V focuses on the affective dimension of audience–performer interactions in the theatrical space of the Spanish corrales and how emotion and empathy can inform new approaches to presenting Las Casas’ work in the literature classroom. The volume closes with an afterword offering strategies to design a course on mind and literature in early modernity.
Karin Kukkonen
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- March 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190634766
- eISBN:
- 9780190634780
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190634766.001.0001
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Psycholinguistics / Neurolinguistics / Cognitive Linguistics
This book argues that the neoclassical critical tradition of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with its cognitive perspective on the workings of literature, constitutes a key chapter in the ...
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This book argues that the neoclassical critical tradition of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with its cognitive perspective on the workings of literature, constitutes a key chapter in the prehistory of current cognitive approaches to literature. It argues for an understanding of neoclassical criticism as a debate (and not a dogma). As the neoclassical critics considered vraisemblance, that is, the designed mimesis of a work of art, they integrated both cultural and cognitive aspects; this makes them a valuable partner in conversation with today’s cognitive poetics. The continued relevance of the neoclassical rules of poetic justice, the unities, and decorum (as well as their cognitive underpinnings) is illustrated through case studies that trace the explicit and implicit influences which these rules had on the developing narrative shape of the novel in the eighteenth century. These case studies consider canonical novels (such as Pamela, Clarissa, and Tom Jones), their alternative versions (such as Shamela and Anti-Pamela), and works that have recently gathered more critical attention (such as The Female Quixote). It is shown that the neoclassical heritage influenced novels across different modes, including realist and utopian works (such as L’An 2440) as well as Gothic fiction (such as The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Castle of Otranto).Less
This book argues that the neoclassical critical tradition of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with its cognitive perspective on the workings of literature, constitutes a key chapter in the prehistory of current cognitive approaches to literature. It argues for an understanding of neoclassical criticism as a debate (and not a dogma). As the neoclassical critics considered vraisemblance, that is, the designed mimesis of a work of art, they integrated both cultural and cognitive aspects; this makes them a valuable partner in conversation with today’s cognitive poetics. The continued relevance of the neoclassical rules of poetic justice, the unities, and decorum (as well as their cognitive underpinnings) is illustrated through case studies that trace the explicit and implicit influences which these rules had on the developing narrative shape of the novel in the eighteenth century. These case studies consider canonical novels (such as Pamela, Clarissa, and Tom Jones), their alternative versions (such as Shamela and Anti-Pamela), and works that have recently gathered more critical attention (such as The Female Quixote). It is shown that the neoclassical heritage influenced novels across different modes, including realist and utopian works (such as L’An 2440) as well as Gothic fiction (such as The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Castle of Otranto).
Brian Boyd
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190231217
- eISBN:
- 9780190609061
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190231217.003.0013
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
Literary creation is already consilient with science, for works of art are experiments: artists’ diverse experiments with new combinations of experience audiences will have as they respond. Literary ...
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Literary creation is already consilient with science, for works of art are experiments: artists’ diverse experiments with new combinations of experience audiences will have as they respond. Literary explanation should also be consilient with science. Evolution and cognition can benefit literary criticism, but their relevance will, and should, vary enormously from work to work and from question to critical question. The author proposes a multilevel explanatory model for literary works and effects: the global, the human, the local, the individual, the particular, and the detail. This structure can incorporate evolution and cognition flexibly, as they prove relevant to the questions being asked, without imposing a priori answers. To show the flexibility of the model, the author analyzes three literary examples, three experiments with readers’ experience short enough to consider and contrast: two paired and opposed sonnets by Shakespeare, and a two-page 2011 comic by Art Spiegelman.Less
Literary creation is already consilient with science, for works of art are experiments: artists’ diverse experiments with new combinations of experience audiences will have as they respond. Literary explanation should also be consilient with science. Evolution and cognition can benefit literary criticism, but their relevance will, and should, vary enormously from work to work and from question to critical question. The author proposes a multilevel explanatory model for literary works and effects: the global, the human, the local, the individual, the particular, and the detail. This structure can incorporate evolution and cognition flexibly, as they prove relevant to the questions being asked, without imposing a priori answers. To show the flexibility of the model, the author analyzes three literary examples, three experiments with readers’ experience short enough to consider and contrast: two paired and opposed sonnets by Shakespeare, and a two-page 2011 comic by Art Spiegelman.
Benjamin Morgan
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226442112
- eISBN:
- 9780226457468
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226457468.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
The book’s epilogue discusses Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray as a novel that forecasts a revitalized contemporary interest in the aesthetic implications of what has recently been called the ...
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The book’s epilogue discusses Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray as a novel that forecasts a revitalized contemporary interest in the aesthetic implications of what has recently been called the “neural self.” Using notebooks Wilde kept as an Oxford student, the chapter traces Wilde’s interest in materialism to the scientific and philosophical accounts of matter promoted by Thomas Huxley, Henry Maudsley, and others. The epilogue briefly survey’s the book’s argument that aesthetic discourse provided nineteenth-century writers with a platform for exploring materialist accounts of human experience developed in physiological and evolutionary science. It then situates the book’s argument in relation to recent scientific approaches to humanistic inquiry, including neuroaesthetics, cognitive literary studies, and deconstructive approaches to neuroscience developed by Catherine Malabou. The chapter concludes by suggesting that returning to nineteenth-century configurations of the relationship between science and aesthetics are helpful for formulating less oppositional accounts of the humanities and sciences today.Less
The book’s epilogue discusses Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray as a novel that forecasts a revitalized contemporary interest in the aesthetic implications of what has recently been called the “neural self.” Using notebooks Wilde kept as an Oxford student, the chapter traces Wilde’s interest in materialism to the scientific and philosophical accounts of matter promoted by Thomas Huxley, Henry Maudsley, and others. The epilogue briefly survey’s the book’s argument that aesthetic discourse provided nineteenth-century writers with a platform for exploring materialist accounts of human experience developed in physiological and evolutionary science. It then situates the book’s argument in relation to recent scientific approaches to humanistic inquiry, including neuroaesthetics, cognitive literary studies, and deconstructive approaches to neuroscience developed by Catherine Malabou. The chapter concludes by suggesting that returning to nineteenth-century configurations of the relationship between science and aesthetics are helpful for formulating less oppositional accounts of the humanities and sciences today.
Natalie Gerber
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823282043
- eISBN:
- 9780823285983
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823282043.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
Modernist American poets Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams insisted on the values of linguistic sound beyond the semantic. Stevens focused on the modulations of the sounds ...
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Modernist American poets Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams insisted on the values of linguistic sound beyond the semantic. Stevens focused on the modulations of the sounds and lexical stresses of individual words within the meter. Frost and Williams focused on the less predictable intonational contours of phrases and sentences (although for Frost, the intonational contours play with and against the metrical pattern, whereas for Williams, lines tend to align with intonational phrases, turning prosodic speech tunes into a prosodic verse measure). Drawing on recent cognitive studies that pertain to the processing of speech sound and birdsong, this article suggests a need to revise critical assessments of the poets’ investments of belief in sound; it also considers why, given this research, Frost’s theory of sentence sounds has, perhaps unfairly, fared a worse critical reception.Less
Modernist American poets Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams insisted on the values of linguistic sound beyond the semantic. Stevens focused on the modulations of the sounds and lexical stresses of individual words within the meter. Frost and Williams focused on the less predictable intonational contours of phrases and sentences (although for Frost, the intonational contours play with and against the metrical pattern, whereas for Williams, lines tend to align with intonational phrases, turning prosodic speech tunes into a prosodic verse measure). Drawing on recent cognitive studies that pertain to the processing of speech sound and birdsong, this article suggests a need to revise critical assessments of the poets’ investments of belief in sound; it also considers why, given this research, Frost’s theory of sentence sounds has, perhaps unfairly, fared a worse critical reception.
Karin Kukkonen
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190913045
- eISBN:
- 9780190913076
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190913045.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
The introduction presents an outline of 4E approaches to cognition and sketches how these approaches are brought to bear on developments in the eighteenth-century novel in this book. 4E cognition ...
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The introduction presents an outline of 4E approaches to cognition and sketches how these approaches are brought to bear on developments in the eighteenth-century novel in this book. 4E cognition conceptualises cognition as embodied (as thinking is rooted in our bodies and their movement), embedded (as the mind/body connects to social environments and interactions with others), extended (as cognitive processes involve both the mind/body and material artefacts from the environment), and enactive (as perception depends on the body). The chapter briefly relates the contribution of this book to earlier work on literature from a 4E perspective in cognitive literary studies, as well as to the interest in materialism and book history in eighteenth-century studies.Less
The introduction presents an outline of 4E approaches to cognition and sketches how these approaches are brought to bear on developments in the eighteenth-century novel in this book. 4E cognition conceptualises cognition as embodied (as thinking is rooted in our bodies and their movement), embedded (as the mind/body connects to social environments and interactions with others), extended (as cognitive processes involve both the mind/body and material artefacts from the environment), and enactive (as perception depends on the body). The chapter briefly relates the contribution of this book to earlier work on literature from a 4E perspective in cognitive literary studies, as well as to the interest in materialism and book history in eighteenth-century studies.
Karin Kukkonen
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190913045
- eISBN:
- 9780190913076
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190913045.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
The early novel developed modes of writing that are considered gripping and immersive, because they foreground physical states, meaningful gestures, and emotional excitement. This monograph shows how ...
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The early novel developed modes of writing that are considered gripping and immersive, because they foreground physical states, meaningful gestures, and emotional excitement. This monograph shows how these changes relate to “embodied” and “enactive” cognition, “embed” themselves into the cultural and material contexts, and “extend” readers’ thoughts. In an investigation of works from Eliza Haywood, Charlotte Lennox, Sarah Fielding, and Frances Burney, it traces the ways in which such “4E cognition” can contribute to a new perspective on stylistic and narrative changes in eighteenth-century fiction. The embodied dimension of literary language is then related to the media ecologies of letter writing, book learning, and theatricality in the eighteenth century. As the novel feeds off and into these social and material contexts, it comes into its own as a lifeworld technology that might not answer to standards of nineteenth-century realism but that feels real because it is integrated into the lifeworld and its embodied experiences. Together with the issue of realism, this book revisits traditional understandings of the “rise of the novel” and earlier historical perspectives in cognitive literary studies. And the perspective from 4E cognition, it is argued, opens links to book history and media ecologies that can launch historically situated cognitive approaches to literature.Less
The early novel developed modes of writing that are considered gripping and immersive, because they foreground physical states, meaningful gestures, and emotional excitement. This monograph shows how these changes relate to “embodied” and “enactive” cognition, “embed” themselves into the cultural and material contexts, and “extend” readers’ thoughts. In an investigation of works from Eliza Haywood, Charlotte Lennox, Sarah Fielding, and Frances Burney, it traces the ways in which such “4E cognition” can contribute to a new perspective on stylistic and narrative changes in eighteenth-century fiction. The embodied dimension of literary language is then related to the media ecologies of letter writing, book learning, and theatricality in the eighteenth century. As the novel feeds off and into these social and material contexts, it comes into its own as a lifeworld technology that might not answer to standards of nineteenth-century realism but that feels real because it is integrated into the lifeworld and its embodied experiences. Together with the issue of realism, this book revisits traditional understandings of the “rise of the novel” and earlier historical perspectives in cognitive literary studies. And the perspective from 4E cognition, it is argued, opens links to book history and media ecologies that can launch historically situated cognitive approaches to literature.