Congnitive Literary Studies: Current Themes and New Directions

140 Pages·2012·12.474 MB·English

by  Isabel Jaén, Julien Jacques Simon

n
Over the past decade, ou r understanding of the cognition of literature has been transformed
by scientific discoveries, such as the mirror neuron system and its mIe in empathy. O
Addressing questions such as why we care so deeply about fictional characters, what brain
GJ
activities are sparked when we read litel'ature, and how literary works and scholarship can
inform the cognitive sciences, this book surveys the exciting recent developments in the Z
-
field of cognitive literalY studies and inc\udes 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
pl"Ocesses at work when we experience fictional worlds, with findings on the brain 's creativity
sites, this collection also explores the impact of literature on seI f and society, ending with
a discussion on the present and future of the psychology of fiction. Contributors inc\ude
Literature afld the Brru;z author Norman N. Holland, on the neuroscience of metafiction
reflected in DOfl Quixote,. clinicaI psychologist Aaron Mishara on the neurology of self in the
hypnagogic (between waking and sleeping) state and its manifestations in Kafl{a'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. The result is
a vast mosaic of research that takes literalY criticism inward, investigating the minds that
generate and celebrate some of our most iconic fictional worlds.
ISABEL JAÉN is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Portland State University in Portland,
Oregon. JULIEN JACQUES SIMON is Assistant Professor of Spanish and French
at Indiana University East in Richmond, Indiana. They are executive members of the
Modern Language Association Cognitive Approaches to Literature discussion group and
cofounded the Literary Theory, Cognition, and the Brain working gmup at Yale University.
CURRENT
COGNITlVE APPROACHES
TO LlTERATURE ANO
THEMES
CULTURE SERIES
I.J 1/dama,
AND NEW
tll/d Ptllnck ( {11m }f{ll/tIlI, h,1(/t'r
DIRECTIONS
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS Edited by ldabel Jaén d
WWH'.ute.T.a..Jpre.JJ.conz 800.252.3206 Julien Jacqlle<:l Simon
COGNITIVE LITERARY STUDIES
COGNITIVE APPROACHES TO L1TERATURE ANO CULTURE SERIES
EOITEO BY FREOERICK LUIS ALOAMA, ARTURO J. ALOAMA,
ANO PATRICK COLM HOGAN
Current Themes and New Directions
EDITED BY ISABEL JAÉN AND JULIE JACQUES SIMON
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS ~ Austin
Cognitive Approaches to Literamre and Culmre includes monographs and edited CONTENTS
volumes rhar incorporare curring-edge research in cognitive science, neuroscience,
psychology, Iinguisrics, narra tive rheory, and related tields, exploring how this research
bears on and illuminares cultural phenomena such as, bm nor Iimited to, Iiterature, Foreword vii
tilm, drama, music, dance, visual art, digital media, and comics. The volumes published
F. Elizabeth Hart
in this series represem both specialized scholarship and interdisciplinary investigations
that are deeply sensitive to cultural specitics and grounded in a cross-culmral Acknowledgments xv
understanding of shared emotive and cognitive principIes.
1ntroduction 1
Copyright © 2012 by rhe University ofTexas Press Isabel jaén and julien J Simon
Ali righrs reserved
Firsr edition, 2012 SECTION I. Cognitive Literary Studies Today 11
First paperback edition, 2013
Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sem to:
C HAl'TE R o N E. An Overview of Recent Developments
Permissions
in Cognitive Literary Studies 13
University of Texas Press
Isabel jaén and julienJ Simon
P.O. Box 7819
Austin, TX 78713-7819
lItpress.utexas.edll/abolltlbook-pennissions
SECTION 11. The Cognitive Sciences
@J 111e paper used in this book meets the minimum requircmems of ANSI/N ISO and Literary Theory in Dialogue 33
Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper).
CHAl'TER TWO. Why Literature 1s Necessary, and Not Just Nice 35
LIRRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-I'URLICATlON DATA Richard J Gerrig
Cognitive Iiterary studies : currem themes and ne", directions / edited by Isabel Jaén
and Julien Jacques Simon. - 1st ed. CHAl'TER THREE. Theory of Mind in Reconciling the Split Object
p_ cm. - (Cognitive approaches to literature and culture) of Narrative Comprehension 53
Includes index_ joseph A. Murphy
ISBN 978-0-292-75442-3
1. Lirerature~History and criticism-111eory, etc. 2. Literature and science.
3-Cognition and culture. I. Jaén, Isabel, 1970- 11. Simon, Julien Jacques, 1974- 5 E CTI O N 111. Neurological Approaches to Literature 71
I'N55_C6+6 2012
809'.933S6- dC23
CHAl'TE-R FOUR. Don Quixote and the Neuroscience of Metafiction 73
- Norman N Ho/land
CHAl'TER FIVE. The Mourning Brain: Attachment, Anticipation,
and Hamlet's Unmanly Grief 89
Patricll Colm Hogan
CHAl'TER SIX. The Literary Neuroscience of Kafka's Hypnagogic
Hallucinations: How Literature 1nforms the Neuroscientific Study
of Self and 1ts Disorders 105
Aaron L. Mishara
vi COGNITlVE LlTERARY STUDIES
SECTION IV. Language, Literature, and Mind Processes 125
(
CHAPTER SEVEN. Blending and Beyond: Form and Feeling in
Poetic lconicity 127 FORE~
~~aret1f.17ree~n
CHAPTER EIGHT. "A sermon in the midst of a smutty tale": F. ELlZABETH HART
Blending in Genres of Speech, Writing, and Literature 145
Michael Sinding
CHAPTER NINE. Counting in Metrical Verse 163
Nigel17abb and Morris 1falle
CHAPTER TEN. Fictive Motion and Perspectival Construal
THIS BOOK EXPLORES the intersections of literary studies and cognitive
in the Lyric 183
science, contributing to a growing body of literary research emerging over
Claiborne Rice
the past twenty years in response to developing theories of "embodied cogni
tion."l Turning gradually away from models of the mind as computer-like or
SECTlON v. Literature and Human Development 199 as functionally autonomous, today's cognitive scientists increasingly view the
mind as complexly integrated with the biological brain, and they view both
CHAPTER ELEVEN. Education by Poetry: Hartley's Theory of Mind as the brain and the mind as organically situated within - indeed structurally en
a Context for Understanding Early Romantic Poetic Strategies 201 abled and constrained by-the body.2 The implications of this paradigm shift
Brad Sullivan reach far, spal111ing across important domains of philosophical inquiry and
consequently academic disciplines.
CHAPTER TWELVE. Leafy Houses and Acorn Kisses: J. M. Barrie's
In their 1999 study Philosaphy in the 17lesh, George Lakoff and Mark John
Neverland Playground 219
son describe embodiment theory in a way that shows how it combines the
Glenda Sacks
priorities of phenomenology, epistemology, and ontology: "Cognitive sci
ence provides a new and important take on an age-old philosophical prob
POSTSCRIPT. The Psychology of Fiction: Present and Future 235 lem, the problem of what is real and how we can know it, if we can know' it.
Keith OatleYJ Raymond A. ~rJ and Maja Djikic Our sense of what is real begins with and depends crucially upon our bodies,
especially our sensorimotor apparatus, which enables us to perceive, move,
and manipulate, and the detailed structures of our brains, which have been
Contrwutors 251
~haped bfboth evolution and experience" (17). In such a view, perceiving,
Index 255 .. knowing, and being become intricately intertwined, collapsing category
boundaries that may forever shift the terms of academic analysis. Scholars
in the humanities and social sciences-literature, fine arts, history, philoso
phy, anthropology, and linguistics-are being drawn to embodied cognition,
some influenced by the rise of connectionism (and other symptoms of non
linear dynamic systems theory, with which embodied cognition proves highly
compatible). Decades of exposure to postmodern philosophies have condi
tioned humanists and social scientists toward interdisciplinarity in general
and toward more context-friendly models in particular. Eschewing "liberal"
viii COGNITIVE LITERARY STUDIES FOREWORD ix
notions of a human essence-of a humanity that can be circumscribed and uniquely human and general-level cognitive capacities that areextremely dif
ontologically distinct from its surroundings-these scholars strive to plàce the ficult to test using empirical methods. Literary texts may serve as laboratories
human within its larger material, social, and cultural contexts. It may seem in which language processing, narrative comprehension, creativity, memory,
odd at first to consider how their curiosity has led them to cognitive science, a emotions, and many other cognitive functions are brought intensively into
discipline so apparently distant from their interests and (usually) their formal focus-and are, in a sense, isolated and performed for study-thus bespeak
training. But shifts in the humanities and social sciences have occurred in tan ing instances not just of extraordinary cognition (what has traditionally drawn
dem with changes in the sciences, and the result so far has been a small-scale literary critics) but also of general or "everyday" cognition (what now appeals
and tentative but also energizing recognition of mutual interests. to scientists' interests). Researchers of all kinds variously trained in the work
The Literature and Cognitive Science Conference held in the spring of 2006 ings of brains, minds, and texts stand to gain from a conversation that brings
at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, and for which I was privileged to their differing methodologies to the table.
serve as co-coordinator with Alao: Richardson of Boston College, constituted Cognitive Literary Studies bears a resemblance to other important essay col
an important step in this collaboration. The researchers who attended were, lections in cognitive literary studies that began appearing about a decade ago
for the most part, humanists or fine arts researchers: literary critics, philoso and are steadily proliferating even at this writing. Notable among them are
phers, and theatre and performance specialists. But the event also attracted a Herman (2003), Gavins and Steen (2003), Richardson and Spolsky (2004),
handful of scientists, including cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists, and Gottschall and Wilson (2005), Turner (2006), McConacrue and Hart (2006),
empirically oriented philosophers of mind. As a group these researchers rep Zunshine (2010), Aldama (2010), and Herman (2011). The Richardson and
resented a degree of interdisciplinarity that is on the rise in academia and that Spolsky collection has been especially influential as a primer for newcomers
is indicated by the founding and flourishing of various scholarly organizations to the field because of Richardson's invaluable introductory essay "Studies
dedicated to the crossing of these major divides. These include (but are not in Literature and Cognition: A Field Map."3 Despite its similarities to these
exclusive to) the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA), incor predecessor and companion collections, however, Cognitive Literary Studies
porated in 1985; Harvard University's "Cognitive Theory and the Arts" semi differs in key ways. One difference, as I just mentioned, is that it actively per
nar, established in 2001; Yale University's "Literary Theory, Cognition, and forms the collaboration between humanists and scientists that these other
the Brain" seminar, begun in 2005; and Purdue University's "(Co)Ignition" volumes have tended to hypothesize-but have not generally realized-as an
discussion group, founded in 2008 as part of Purdue's Center for Cognitive ideal research scenario for the field. Richardson himself has recently articu
Literary Studies. Evidence of the Connecticut conference's success soon fol lated the terms of this ideal scenario (in the introduction to rus 2010 mono
lowed in the form of similar gatherings at Bucknell (2007), Purdue (2007), and graph): "[A] healthy interdisciplinarity does not involve one group convert
Haverford Collegç (2008) and in the inauguration of two new book series by ing to the norms, aims, and ethos of another, but rather participants from all
scholars who had been among the conference's participants: the University groups joining in a serious and mutually critical conversation in the interests
of Texas Press's Cognitive Approaches to Literature and Culture (edited by of a new consensus that none could have produced singly" (Richardson 2010,
Frederick Luis Aldama, Arturo J. Aldama, and Patrick Colm Hogan) and Pal xiii). Literary scholars, Richardson writes:
grave MacMillan's Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance (edited
by Bruce McConachie and Blakey Vermeule). bring to the interdisciplinary encounter a long and elaborate rustory of care
The present volume features the work of some of the scholars who have ful scrutiny of figurative language, representations of mind and behavior,
been engaged in these interdisciplinary conversations (at the University of narrative and discursive modes, and other linguistic phenomena currently of
Connecticut and elsewhere). Through it, the editors hope to demonstrate that, great interest to their colleagues in neuroscience and cognitive science. 1hey
just as the study of the mind is becoming an evocative new way to approach can bring to the table as well their own sorts of evidence, including a huge,
the problems of literary analysis, so toa are literary studies becoming interest diverse, multi lingual and multicultural text base, spanning over two millen
ing and useful to scientists. Literary scholars bring training and insight to the nia, that most scientific researchers can only begin to access. (Richardson
analysis of acts of reading, writing, and interpretation-acts symptomatic of 2010, xiii)
X COGNITIVE LlTERARV STUDIES FOREWORD xi
A second key difference that this book marks, and one that is just as sig long-established criticai practice and, second, by recasting that polarity onto
nificant as its methodological eclecticism, has to do with its very active ex a continuum of relations, offering instead a set of combinatory integrations.
plorations of the theory of "embodied cognition" and the lUlUsual combi Neither realism nor relativislll relllains intact within a systelll that takes brainj
nations of philosophical frameworks - phenomenological, epistemological, . lllind-filtered knowledge or experience as its ground. Yet, at the same time,
and ontological-that a perspective based on mind-embodiment enables. because cognition itself is grounded in both the real world and in the con
Because embodied cognition configures the brain/mind as a constraining strainirig structures of sensory, perceptual, and conceptual interiority, knowl
medium through which alI human knowledge and experience must filter edge and experience must be based on both, although in varying degrees, and
at the same time that it also accounts for the context-dependent nature of hence the shift to the non-idealizing llleasure of the continuum.7
the brain/mind's development and "online" processing-any theoretical ap AIl cognitive-based literary studies share 'this philosophical orientation
proach using this science commits itself to the epistemological position of along the epistemological continuum, oscil1ating between the poles of realism
"constrained constructivism."4 This position, whose particular expression I and relativismo And becallse literary experience is itself quite wide in scope,
have borrowed from the literary critic N. Katherine Hayles, has been variously encolllpassing a range of experience from the relatively narrow processing of
described by the philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Hilary Putnam (as a text's form to the larger-scale analyses of a text's myriad contexts, I believe
"embodied consciousness" and "internai realism" respectively), by the cogni that cognitive-inflected literary studies, such as those exemplified in Cqgnitive
tive linguist and philosopher George Lakoff and Mark Johnson ("experien Literary Studies, have the potential to bring much-needed coherence to the
tialism"), and more recently by the cognitive literary critic Nancy Easterlin cornucopia of approaches representing today's literary studies in general. This
("weak constructivism"), among others. It represents a third position nestled book, through its investment in the epistemological and interpretive nuances
between the epistemological extremes of realism and relativism-or rather engendered by elllbodied cognition, inhabits a necessary middle space of criti
a set of positions that together define a continuum of positions running be cai reading between the narrower scope of textual processing and the wider
tween the two without ever fulIy committing to the extremes of either. scope needed to situate texts within their historical and cultural contexts.
The resulting epistemology emphasizes not ultimate knowledge but pos
sible knowledge, the only kind of knowledge actually available to us humans,
NOTES
whose relationships both to reality and to the symbol systems we create to
accommodate reality are always mediated by our cognitive systems. Hayles' 1. Some early examples of cognitive literary studies include Holland 1988, Turner 1991,
and Tsur 1992; those appearing in a kind of"second wave:' starting from the mid-1990S, in
term "constrained constructivism" refers to the mutual perceptions within
c1ude Spolsky 1993 and 2001, Turner 1996, Crane 2001, and Richardson 2001; some more re
and even across animal species (including the human animal) that are not
cent highlights include Herman 2002, Hogan 2003, Palmer 2004, Zunshine 2006 and 2010,
a matter of positive associations but of negativities.5 These negativities are and Richardson 2010.
"consistent constraints;' adhering at a level of philosophical analysis that re 2. The literature on embodied cognition is now too vast to cite comprehensivcly, but
fuses to rise above local interactions into abstractions.6 The idea that consis some importam deep background studies include Rosch and L10yd 1978, Lakoff and John
tencies might hold between one individual knower's perceptions and another son 1980, Lakoffl987, Jolmson 1987, Varcla, Thompson, and Rosch 1991, Lakoff and John
son 1999. _-
individual knower's perceptions is in itself a powerful qualification of rela
-- 3· Although now somewhat dated, this survey is still indispensable as an introduction to
tivism and its companion concept, social constructivism. This may appear
the ficld because of the way Richardson categorizes the approaches that have emerged since
to be an apologetics for scientific empiricism if not for the fact that it also Holland 1988.
recognizes the limits of observation, taking in the culturalIy determinant and 4. See Haylcs 1993.
context-dependent nature of all representations, including scientific ones, and 5· Haylcs describes cross-species perceptual studies showing that basic perceptions are
species-specific, differing, say, between frogs, dogs, and human bcings according to the dif
erasing the fantasy of a scientific positivismo Constrained constructivism is
fering stimulation-processing tools that each species possesses. Yet despite the perception
committed, therefore, to both limited constructivism and limited empiricism.
specific nature of different species' encoumers with their environrnents, objects within their
This orientation places cognitive theory-and the literary theories influenced
environrnents neverthclcss existi they are not figments of any singlcspecies' perceptual appa
by it-at a crucial remove from others that have evolved dllring and through ratus. Furthermore, Hayles argucs, communication about the environrnem can, in fact, take
postmodernism, first, by deconstructing the realism/relativism binary of place across the gaps between species (and prcsumably within species) in spite of thcir differ-
xii COGNITIVE LlTERARY STUDIES FOREWORD xiii
ences. Responding differemly to the same environrnemal stimulus, diffcrcnt perceivers havc Hogan, Patrick Colm. 2003. Cognitive scienee, Iitcratllre, and thc 1111'S: Ag/lide for h/lmanists.
London: Routledge.
responses that coalesce, or ovcrlap, such as, to cite Hayles' cxample, a dog and its human
Holland, Norman N. 1988. Tbe brain ofR obert Frost: A cognitive approach to literature. Lon
owner both reacting simultaneously-in their differing and species-specific ways-to the
don: ROlltledge. .
sight of a rabbit suddcnly crossing their path: "[Reality] impinges on [the dog], impinges on
me. ... We both know that we are responding to an event we hold in common, as well as to Johnson, Mark. 1987. The body in the mind: The bodily basis of mcaning, imagination, and reason.
a context that includes memories of similar evems we have shared" (Hayles 1993, 31). Nancy Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Easterlin's discussion of "weak constructivism," following Hayles' by a fcw ycars, makes a Lakoff, George. 1987. Women,jire, and dangerous things: What eategories reveal abollt the 1IIind.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
similar argurncm but on the basis of shared "cognitive predispositions" in humans specifi-
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors lJ1e tive by. Chicago: University of Chi-
cally (Easterlin 1999, 139).
cago Press. .
6. Hayles writes: "A modcl of represemation that declines the leap imo abstraction fig-
ures itsclf as species-specific, culturally determined, and comext-dependem. Emphasizing ---o 1999. Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its ehallenge to lVestem thollght.
Ncw York: Basic Books.
instrumental efficacy rather than precision, it assumes local interactions rather than positive
correspondences that hold universally. It engages in a rhetoric of 'good enough; indexing McConachie, Bmce, and F. Elizabeth Hart, eds. 2006. Pelformance and cognition: Theatre
its conclusions to the comext in which implied judgmems about adcquacy are made. Yet it stooies and the cognitive tum. London: ROlltledge.
also recognizes that within the domains specified by these parameters, enough consistencies Palmer, Alan. 2004. Fictional mimls. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
obtain in the processing and in [reality] to make recognition reliable and rclatively stable" Richardson, Alan. 2001. British Romanticism and the science 01 mind. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
(Hayles 1993, 32). See also Richardson's discussion of the same analysis by Hayles (Richard-
---o 2010. The nellral sublime: Cognitive theories alld Romalltic texts. Baltimore: Johns
son 2010, 4).
Hopkins University Press.
7. I previously offered some of the ideas in this analysis of Hayles' work and its impli-
cations for cognitive literary epistemology in a 2001 essay that appeared in PhiWsophy and Richardson, Alan, and Ellen Spolsky, eds. 2004. The lJ10rll off otioll: Cogllitioll, clI/tllre, alld
complexity. Aldcrshot, UK: Ashgatc.
Literature. That journal has kindly given permission to use them here. Sec also Richardson
Rosch, Eleanor, and Barbara B. Lloyd, eds. 1978. Cogllitioll alld categoriz.atioll. Hillsdale, NJ:
2010,3-5·
Lawrence Erlballm Associates.
Spolsky, Ellen. 1993. Gaps in natllre: Literal")' interpl'etatioll and the modlllar mind. Albany:
WORKS CITE O State Univcrsity of New York Press.
Aldama, Frederick Luis, ed. 2010. Tuward a cognitive theory of narrative acts. Austin: Univer ---o 2001. Satisfying sllepticism: Embodied knOlvledge ill the early modem lJI01·ld. Aldershot:
Ashgate Pllblishing.
sity of Texas Press.
Crane, Mary Thomas. 2001. Shakespeare's brain: Rcading with eognitive theory. Princeton, NJ: TSllr, Rellvcn. 1992. TOl/1ard a theory ofe ognitive poetics. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Tllrner, Mark. 1991. Reading minds: The st1ll1y of English in the age of eogllitil'C seiellee. Prince
Princeton University Press.
ton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Easterlin, Nancy. 1999. Making knowledge: Bioepistemology and the foundatlons of literary
theory. Mosaic 32, no. 1: 131-47. ---o 1996. The /iterary mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gavins, Joanna, andGerard Steeh. 2003. Cognitive poetics in practice. London: Routledge. ---, ed. 2006. The artf1l1 milld: Cogllitive science alld the riddle ofhll11la1l ereativity. Oxford:
Gottschall, Jonathan, and David Sloan Wilson, eds. 2005. The /iterary animal: Evolution and Oxford University Prcss.
the nature of narrative. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Varcl~, Francisco J., Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch. 1991. TlJe embodied milld: Cogllitive
Hart, F. Elizabeth. 2001. The epistemology of cognitive literary studies. Philosophy and Lit- setence and human experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
erature 25, no. 2: 314-34. ZllnshineJ"isa:2006. Why lJIe read fotion: TJJCOI")' ofm ind and the novel. Colllmblls: Ohio Statc
University Press.
Hayles, N. Katherine. 1993. Constrained constructivism: Locating sciemific inquiry in the
theater of represemation. In Realism and representation: Essays on the problem ofr ealism in ---, ed. 2010. 11Itrod1lction to cognitive CII/ttÍra/ stllllies. Baltimore: Jolms Hopkins Uni
relation to science, literature, and eu/ture. Edited by George Levine. Madison: University vcrsity Prcss.
ofWisconsin Press.
Herman, David. 2002. Story logic: Problems aml possibilities of narrative. Lincoln: University
ofNebraska Press.
___, ed. 2003. Narrative theory and the cognitive seiences. Stanford, CA: Center for the
Study of Language and Information.
___ , ed. 2011. The emergence of mind: Representations of conseiousness in narrative discourse
in English. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Cqgnitivc Litcrary Studies would not have been possible without the interdis
ciplinary minds that have helped us make it tangible. We are truly grateful to
those who have so generously shared their expertise, enthusiasm, and friend
ship, encouraging us to pursue and complete this project.
We thank panicularly Jim Burr, our editor, and Frederick L. Aldama,
Arturo J. Aldama, and Patrick Colm Hogan, our series editors, for believing
in the book from the start. We also thank Leslie Tingle, MoUy R. Frisinger,
Chris Dodge, Nancy Bryan, and everyone who assisted us with the editing
process at the University ofTexas Press.
Our deepest gratitude to our contributors, for their work, energy, and
patience, to oue reviewers, and to the many scholars who helped us with the
initial steps of theproject or read this manuscript, in whole or in part, at dif
ferent stages in its development: Andrew Gordon, David Herman, Nancy
Easterlin, Liz Han, Howard Mancing, Charles Ganelin, Keith Oatley, Mary
1homas Crane, Matthew Belmonte, Alan Palmer, Richard Schweickert, Ray
mond Mar, David MiaU, Marie-Laure Ryan, Maja Djikic, Amy Cook, Barbara
Dancygier, John Frow, Elena Semino, Peter StockweU, Joanna Gavins, Teenie
Matlock, Alan Richardson, Joseph Bizup, Anne Varty, Eric Olofson, Eric
Freeze, Marjorie Taylor, Bruce McConachie, Rhonda Blair, Arnold Heid
sieck, and Don Kuik~~. We are also grateful to Cynthia Sloan, Simon Taylor,
Eva Núfiez, George Kilrnezis, Roger Market, Julia Rosenberg, and Josidalgo
Martínez for their insightful comments.
For their valuable help, advice, and warm support we would also like to
thank Jonathan Brent, Lisa Zunshine, Attilio Favorini, Frank Hakemulder,
Paula Leverage, and Floyd MerreU.
FinaUy, Julien Simon would like to thank Indiana University East for
grantinghinÍ; feUowship to work on this book.
COGNITIVE LITERARY STUDIES
INTRODUCTlON
ISABEL )AÉN ANO )ULlEN ). SIMON
I. THE STUOY OF MINO ANO LlTERATURE:
AN INTEROISCIPLlNARY ENOEAVOR
For years we have been adding tiles to the vast mosaic of research on the cog
nition of literature. Patterns have been created and have diversified. As we
step back now to observe the current shape of cognitive literary studies, we
begin to discem a clearer picture. There is still much to compose; the renewed
energy that scholars have brought to the assemblage guarantees the health and
permanence of a field whose diversity and far-reaching nature forces it to take
the slow steps of a giant. Cognitive literary studies may indeed look like an im
pressive and intimidating Colossus of Rhodes, or perhaps like a Rercules at
tempting to create a smooth passage between the humanities and the sciences.
The study of literature in relation to the human mind and its natural and
social context enjoys a long tradition. Commonly cited examples of early
philosophical interest in the creation and reception of verbal art are Plato's
Republic and Aristotle's Poetics. There are many medieval accounts of the socio
ritual and didactic function of tales, such as Boccaccio's Decameron, Chaucer's
The Canterbúry Tales, and Don Juan Manuel's The Book of Count Lucanor and
.. -Patronio. The power of acted narratives to provoke a psychological reaction in
audiences was well known to the participants in classical tragedies, and artists
would consistently exploit the allure of rhythm and pitch to create verses as
well as musical and dance accompaniments for other artistic forms.
Medieval and early modem thought inherits Platonic warnings as much
as Aristotelian recipes to deal with the transformative power of literature.
Rumans can recognize the impact that fictional narratives have on the mind
and the community, as evidenced by Lope de Vega's manual on writing suc
cessful plays, The New Art of Malling Comedies, and Juan Luis Vives' WorllS of