Description
Book SynopsisMargaret H. Freeman is Co-Director of the Myrifield Institute for Cognition and the Arts, MA, USA. Professor Freeman's past publications include
The Poem as Icon: A Study in Aesthetic Cognition (2020).
Trade ReviewFreeman's book is not just an engagingly learned re-introduction to Emily Dickinson but a provocation to consider how contemporary scholarship on embodied cognition may serve as a means of building a more complete understanding of Dickinson's poetic art. * Ryan Cull, Associate Professor of English, New Mexico State University, USA *
Drawing on the insights of cognitive science, Margaret Freeman demonstrates that understanding a poem, even before any attempt at interpretation, is to cognitively experience it, allowing it to reveal itself by what it is saying and doing. Her subtle and meticulous analyses illustrate how those “animate organisms” work, and they are thus true eye-openers as well as an enormous gain for all lovers of Dickinson’s poems, academics and general readers alike. * Gudrun Grabher, Professor Emerita of American Studies, University of Innsbruck, Austria *
Margaret Freeman's new book challenges our preconceptions not only about Emily Dickinson but also about the rapidly growing field of cognitive literary studies. She works scrupulously with all levels of Dickinson's poems, descrying impalpable nuances of poetic language while never losing sight of the final analysis and sense of indefinable but alluring artistic work. Freeman's book applies cognitive science findings and heuristics to literary studies and proffers a holistic view of the ways we read a poem, accompanied by step-by-step comments and striking readings. * Denis Akhapkin, Associate Professor of Languages and Literature, Smolny College, Russia *
Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments 1. Demure as Dynamite: Dickinson and Cognition 2. Everything Counts: Reading the Manuscripts 3. The Manuscript Markings 4. Measuring Time in Meter and Rhythm 5. Affective Prosody 6. The Life of Words 7. Bringing a Poem to Life 8. Intimate Discourse 9. Grounded-Self Spaces 10. The Presence of Self 11. The Way We Map 12. Intentional Mapping 13. Conceiving a Universe 14. A Transformative Poetics 15. Dickinsonian Cognition
Appendix References Index of First Lines Subject Index
