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This chapter surveys some of the key issues in the study of embodiment in literary reading. Recent research in psycholinguistics has called attention to the role of motor resonance and experiential models in understanding language—two psychological mechanisms often brought together under the heading of “embodied simulation.” How does literary reading, and particularly reading literary narrative, leverage these embodied phenomena? Does embodiment always matter in reading or only in specific circumstances? Building on linguist David Ritchie’s scalar account of embodied simulation, and using Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho as a case study, this chapter distinguishes among various types of embodied involvement and shows how they shape the experience of reading Ellis’s novel. It also draws attention to the question of consciousness, calling for empirical research on the interplay between unconscious processes and lived experience (mental imagery, bodily feelings, etc.) in engaging with literary narrative.

The chapter will address the notion of embodiment from a neuroscientific perspective, by emphasizing the crucial role played by bodily relations and sociality on the evolution and development of distinctive features of human cognition. The neurophysiological level of description is here accounted for in terms of bodily-formatted representations and discussed by replying to criticisms recently raised against this notion. The neuroscientific approach here proposed is critically framed and discussed against the background of the Evo-Devo focus on a little explored feature of human beings in relation to social cognition: their neotenic character. Neoteny refers to the slowed or delayed physiological and/or somatic development of an individual. Such development is largely dependent on the quantity and quality of interpersonal relationships the individual is able to establish with her/his adult peers. It is proposed that human neoteny further supports the crucial role played by embodiment, here spelled out by adopting the explanatory framework of embodied simulation, in allowing humans to engage in social relations, and make sense of others’ behaviors.This approach can fruitfully be used to shed new light onto non propositional forms of communication and social understanding and onto distinctive human forms of meaning making, like the experience of man-made fictional worlds.

People’s experiences with literature are incredibly diverse and range from speeded readings of books to slow, deliberate interpretations of poems and great novels lasting many years. Some readers are novices with little literary training, while a smaller group of readers are experts in bringing a vast experience in interpreting texts to their studies of literary meaning. The claim in this chapter is that these varied ways of experiencing literary texts can be readily described in terms of embodied dynamics in which a wide range of personal, historical, and cultural constraints interact to produce distinct in-the-moment readings of literature. This perspective does not reduce the study of literature to the body, but demonstrates how all literary experiences are grounded by embodied simulation processes. Understanding the embodied dynamics of literary experience enables us to explain both common regularities in how people interpret literature and the ways in which individual readers can create unique meaningful interpretations of widely read texts. This embodied dynamics approach to literary reading therefore helps bridge the gap between the scientific study of literature, with its emphasis on what ordinary people ordinarily do with literature, and the more individualistic interpretive goals of scholars in the humanities who seek sensitive, specialized readings of texts based on their own privileged backgrounds and literary tastes.

This chapter provides the key neuroscientific data that enable the reader to follow the case studies. The subheadings are “Cinema, brain and empathy,” in which the reception of film is discussed, and the notion of empathy is introduced with an outline of its history; “Body, brain and neuroscience,” provides a critical account of neuroscience and details of the specific approach used; “From classic cognitivism to embodied cognition,” discusses two mainstream approaches to social cognition, classic cognitivism, and evolutionary psychology; “Motor cognition: Movements and motor goals,” explains why and how the cognitive role of the motor system and its role in visual perception should be reconceived; “Motor cognition: Area F4 and peri-personal space,” provides evidence for the role of the motor system in mapping space; “Motor cognition: Canonical neurons and objects ‘close to hand’,” discusses canonical neurons and their role in object perception; “Motor cognition: Mirror neurons and mirroring mechanisms,” introduces mirror neurons in macaques and mirror mechanisms in humans, and outlines their role in social perception; “Emotions, sensations and embodied simulation,” describes the role of embodied simulation in the perception of the emotions and sensations of others; “The person as a corporeal form between the real world and the world of fiction: Liberated simulation,” introduces the aesthetic specificity of the visual perception model with an explanation of how it could be applied to film viewing in particular and more generally to fiction; and “Brain–body and cinema,” discusses how neuroscience has been applied to the study of film and cinema.

With outset of the moving camera, this chapter argues that more than audiovisual cues for inferential elaboration, an externalization of our embodied mechanisms, a mimicking of ecological perception, or the activation of our motor cortex or mirror neuron system, cinematic motion perception is a particularly illuminating case of the media–man entanglement at the heart of the filmic experience without which there would be no narrative, no diegesis. Among the most established tropes in the study of cinema, its reception, and its production is that the camera presents a point of view onto an independently existing narrative world. The camera thus replaces the human eye as the gateway to the filmic diegesis. However, this trope relies on the illusion of the diegesis-as-text of being a story without discourse, i.e., an objective world existing independently of the spectator whose experience it belongs to. Contrarily, this chapter argues that the affective-motor resonances that flow between the embodied spectator and the material film must be conceived as an integral component of the cinematic diegesis. In reference to the camera work in Kalatozov’s The Cranes Are Flying (1957), it is argued that the true potential of embodiment is not to be found in cinema’s simulation or externalization of human embodied perception but the challenges it poses to a priori determinations of the “human” and the way it gestures toward “human technogenesis,” the coevolution of the human with technics. Embodiment is not separate from technics; it never was.

The present chapter explores evidence for the role of embodied simulation and facial mimicry in the decoding of facial expression of emotion. We begin the chapter by reviewing evidence in favor of the hypothesis that mimicking a perceived facial expression helps the perceiver achieve greater decoding accuracy. We report experimental and correlational evidence in favor of the general effect, and we also examine the assertion that facial mimicry influences perceptual processing of facial expression. Finally, after examining the behavioral evidence, we look into the brain to explore the neural circuitry and chemistry involved in embodied simulation of facial expressions of emotion.

Where does allegory come from? Most studies of allegory view it as a type of artistic or literary endeavor. Our claim is that allegory arises from ordinary experience as people seek to establish connections between the here and now and symbolic and figurative themes. Most embodied metaphors reflect patterns of allegorical thought. We describe some of the ways that allegory is expressed in life events and specific domains of discourse. We report college students’ interpretations of allegory in poetry and literature. We explore the hypothesis that understanding allegory requires people to engage in an “embodied simulation” process in which they imagine themselves participating in the events mentioned in texts. Several studies offer support for this theory, focusing on people’s interpretations of the works of poets and novelists. These findings suggest that allegorical understandings emerge from embodied, cognitive processes that are widespread throughout human experience as part of the “poetics of mind.”

One cannot fully understand schizophrenia unless one is able to frame it within a thorough account of the structure of subjectivity. Neuroscientific research so far has almost entirely neglected the first-person experiential dimension of this syndrome, mainly focusing on high cognitive functions. A theoretical approach focused on self-disorder may shed new light on the psychopathological features of psychosis and inspire empirical research targeting the bodily and neurobiological alterations underpinning schizophrenia. This perspective is consistent with the model of embodied simulation, according to which basic forms of intersubjectivity are bodily grounded and rely on neural reuse. This chapter shows the relationships between the body, its motor potentialities, the notion of minimal self, and the self-disturbances and social deficits characterizing schizophrenia.

In this chapter, the authors summarize their research in the experimental aesthetics of visual art and cinema, motivated by the following assumptions: (1) vision is more complex than the mere activation of the “visual brain”; (2) our visual experience of the world is the outcome of multimodal integration processes, with the motor system as key player; (3) aesthetic experience must be framed within the broader notion of intersubjectivity, as artworks are mediators of the relationship between the subjectivities of artists/creators and beholders; and (4) empathy is an important ingredient of our response to works of art. Capitalizing on the results of their research, one privileging embodiment and the performative quality of perception and cognition, preliminary suggestions for a future research agenda are outlined. Embodied simulation, a model of perception and cognition, can provide a new take on these issues, fostering a newly based dialogue between neuroscience and the humanities.

This Chapter draws on literature on memory and history to analyze how the archive operates as a memory laboratory facilitating the (re-)creation and transmission of different types of memories, from personal to collective, from primary to secondary. Drawing from literature on Embodied Simulation Theory, the Chapter also shows that archives can give us direct access to the world of others. Crucially, the Chapter shows that after the Second World War we have become increasingly aware of our roles as witnesses. A temporal framework based on literature drawn from anthropology, geography and human computer interaction on mapping and map-making is then used to facilitate the design of mixed reality environments. The case studies for this chapter include The Jewish Museum in Berlin; the archiving tool CloudPad; and the trail building tool Placeify.

This chapter addresses the role of camera movement in generating the spectator’s immersion in the narrated film plot. The subheadings are “Style,” in which the origins of the notion of style are explained, with a review of how filmic style has been addressed by film scholars; “Moving the camera,” addressing the stylistic role of camera movements in film history; “Intermezzo,” dedicated to a discussion from the authors’ perspective of a selection of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpieces, including Barry Lyndon, The Shining, and Full Metal Jacket, and introducing the Steadicam; and “Moving mirrors,” in which the empirical results concerning the role of camera movements in generating the spectators’ immersion, empathy, and identification with film characters are presented.

A well-known psychological effect triggered by narrative texts is the reader’s (or listener’s) experience of being mentally drawn into the storyworld, a feeling which is often referred to as immersion. The intensity of the experience of being immersed is not only dependent on various cognitive and emotional propensities of the immersed subject but also determined by particular features of the narrative text. The more a text enables the reader to construct an embodied simulation of the described situation, the more intense the immersive experience will be. Linguistic phenomena relevant to immersion are tense-aspect, modality, deixis, discourse markers, and subjective-evaluative vocabulary. Narrative techniques contributing to immersion include descriptions rich in sensorimotor information, scenic spatial and temporal organization, character focalization, narratorial covertness, and the creation of empathy and suspense. This chapter explores the wide range of linguistic and narratological features brought into play to effect an immersive experience, discussing a number of immersive (and non-immersive) passages from Homer and Thucydides.