Description
Book SynopsisExamines the parallels between certain features of literary experience and functions of the brain. For the neuroscientific community, this book suggests that different areas of research - the neurobiology of vision and reading, the brain-body interactions underlying emotions - may be connected to a variety of aesthetic and literary phenomena.
Trade ReviewArmstrong's book is a testament to the value of the arts and the humanities since their processes and productions generate ideas that are literally the physical (neurobiological) stuff of which we are made. -- Gregory F. Tague ASEBL Journal How Literature Plays with the Brain: The Neuroscience of Reading and Art is a highly informative and carefully argued book. We recommend a close reading of it. Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations Armstrong's book is a beautiful example of how humanities scholars can accomplish a conversation across the gap between the 'two cultures' without giving up their disciplinary identity, bringing the larger picture to bear on the more particular research of the cognitive sciences. -- Karin Kukkonen Cambridge Quarterly Armstrong finds his inspiration in recent neuroscience... his overview of mirror neuron theory and the controversies that surround it, for example, outdoes in accuracy and judiciousness any other account I have seen among neuroaesthetics and cognitive literary studies. Modern Fiction Studies At present, when so many universities would gleefully discard the study of the arts in the service of a utilitarian turn in higher education, the evidence that Armstrong provides for their vital cognitive function and the coherence with which he presents that evidence is indeed both welcome and timely. Philosophy and Literature s
Table of ContentsPreface
1. The Brain and Aesthetic Experience
2. How the Brain Learns to Read and the Play of Harmony and Dissonance
3. The Neuroscience of the Hermeneutic Circle
4. The Temporality of Reading and the Decentered Brain
5. The Social Brain and the Paradox of the Alter Ego
Epilogue
Notes
Index
