front cover of Cognitive Literary Studies
Cognitive Literary Studies
Current Themes and New Directions
Edited by Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon
University of Texas Press, 2012

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, our understanding of the cognition of literature was transformed by scientific discoveries, such as the mirror neuron system and its role in empathy. Addressing questions such as why we care so deeply about fictional characters, what brain activities are sparked when we read literature, and how literary works and scholarship can inform the cognitive sciences, this book surveys the exciting recent developments in the field of cognitive literary studies and includes contributions from leading scholars in both the humanities and the sciences.

Beginning with an overview of the evolution of literary studies, the editors trace the recent shift from poststructuralism and its relativism to a growing interdisciplinary interest in the empirical realm of neuroscience. In illuminating essays that examine the cognitive processes at work when we experience fictional worlds, with findings on the brain’s creativity sites, this collection also explores the impact of literature on self and society, ending with a discussion on the present and future of the psychology of fiction. Contributors include Literature and the Brain author Norman N. Holland, on the neuroscience of metafiction reflected in Don Quixote; clinical psychologist Aaron Mishara on the neurology of self in the hypnagogic (between waking and sleeping) state and its manifestations in Kafka’s stories; and literary scholar Brad Sullivan’s exploration of Romantic poetry as a didactic tool, applying David Hartley’s eighteenth-century theories of sensory experience.

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front cover of Knowledge, Understanding, Well-Being
Knowledge, Understanding, Well-Being
Cognitive Literary Studies
Nancy Easterlin, special issue editor
Duke University Press
Cognitive literary studies occupies a special position in debates over the purpose of higher education and the value of the humanities. Through its varied interdisciplinary commitments, cognitive literary studies offers ways to discover the processes, forms of knowledge, and ethical function of literary experience. Contributors to this issue argue that the humanities are not a trivial pursuit by theorizing and documenting the dynamic interactions of the individuals, groups, texts, and environments that cumulatively produce the forms of knowledge specific to aesthetic engagement. Hailing from psychology, communications, and literary studies, these authors represent diverse methodologies and a range of cognitive specializations, including empirical reading studies, empathy, neurophenomenology, and mindfulness psychology. Through the application of psychology to literature and literary theory, they explore the capacity of the literary humanities to enhance thought and action, whether through scholarship, teaching, mental flexibility, or human well-being.

Contributors. Marshall Alcorn, Paul B. Armstrong, Katalin Bálint, Mark Bracher, Elizabeth Bradburn, M. Soledad Caballero, Nancy Easterlin, Richard J. Gerrig, Erin James, Aimee Knupsky, Anežka Kuzmičová, Micah L. Mumper, Michael O’Neill, Margrethe Bruun Vaage, Alexa Weik von Mossner
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