How Literature Plays with the Brain: The Neuroscience of Reading and Art PDF
Preview How Literature Plays with the Brain: The Neuroscience of Reading and Art
How Literature Plays with the Brain This page intentionally left blank How Literature Plays with the Brain The Neuroscience of Reading and Art Paul B. Armstrong The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore © 2013 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2013 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Armstrong, Paul B., 1949– How literature plays with the brain : the neuroscience of reading and art / Paul B. Armstrong. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4214-1002-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-1-4214-1003-6 (electronic) — ISBN 1-4214-1002-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-4214- 1003-6 (electronic) 1. Reading, Psychology of. 2. Psychology and literature. 3. Neurosciences and the arts. 4. Literature—Psychology. I. Title. BF456.R2A86 2013 801'.92—dc23 2012044603 A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more information, please contact Special Sales at 410-516-6936 or specialsales@ press.jhu.edu. The Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post-consumer waste, whenever possible. For Beverly This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface ix 1 The Brain and Aesthetic Experience 1 2 How the Brain Learns to Read and the Play of Harmony and Dissonance 26 3 The Neuroscience of the Hermeneutic Circle 54 4 The Temporality of Reading and the Decentered Brain 91 5 The Social Brain and the Paradox of the Alter Ego 131 Epilogue 175 Notes 183 Index 213 This page intentionally left blank Preface Why should a professor of literature like myself find neuroscience so fascinat- ing? That is a question I have often asked as I found myself swept away by a growing sense of excitement and urgency while reading the technical, often dauntingly difficult neurobiological literature about action potentials, neu- ronal assemblies, phase-locking oscillations, mirror neurons, and so forth. Why immerse myself in this tough stuff when I could be reading a novel? At the risk of sounding naive and trite, I attribute this fascination in part simply to my interest as a humanist in what makes us human. That is an interest that neuroscience and literary studies share. Literature matters to me, among other reasons, for what it reveals about human experience, and the very different perspective of neuroscience on how the brain works is part of that story. What has surprised and excited me, however, is the plethora of unexpected convergences I have come across between the experimental find- ings of neuroscience and what I know as a literary critic and theorist about reading, interpretation, and the aesthetic experience. Again and again, while reading neuroscientific accounts of the structure and functions of the brain, I have been struck by how these matched up with views I had developed from a lifetime of thinking, teaching, and writing about the experience of reading and the interpretation of literary texts. These similarities are extensive and deep, I think, for reasons that have to do with fundamental brain processes at play in the aesthetic experience. Working out these parallels and convergen- ces in detail is the primary purpose of this book. My central argument is that literature plays with the brain through experi- ences of harmony and dissonance that set in motion and help to negotiate oppositions that are fundamental to the neurobiology of mental functioning— basic tensions in the operation of the brain between the drive for pattern, syn- thesis, and constancy versus the need for flexibility, adaptability, and open- ness to change. The brain’s ability to play in a to-and-fro manner between competing imperatives and mutually exclusive possibilities is a consequence
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