Description
Book SynopsisPresents a discussion of how key concepts from cognitive science complicate our cultural interpretations of strange literary phenomena. This title discusses motifs of confused identity and of twins in drama, and science fiction's use of robots, cyborgs, and androids. It reveals the range of key concepts from science in literary interpretation.
Trade ReviewThe book is stylistically well-written and features interesting readings of various texts. -- Marcus Hartner Zeitschrift fuer Anglistik und Amerikanistik 2009 The author gives herself a refreshingly modest assignment: to demonstrate that a certain cognitive predisposition has contributed to the development of, and continued interest in, specific literary motifs that occur across a wide variety of cultures. This is all that she tries to do, and she does it very well. Philosophy and Literature 2009 Zunshine renders the book accessible to the general reader. -- Aristie Trendel Cercles
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Part 1: "But what am I, then?": Chasing Personal Essences across National Literatures
1. Ural Mountains–Rome–London
2. Essentialism, Functionalism, and Cognitive Psychology
3. Possible Evolutionary Origins of Essentialist Thinking
4. "A bullet's a bullet's a bullet!"
5. Talk to the Door Politely or Tickle It in Exactly the Right Place
6. Resisting Essentialism
7. The Ever-Receding "Essence" of Sosia
8. Identical Twins and Theater
9. How Is Mr. Darcy Different from Colin Firth?
10. Looking for the Real Mademoiselle
11. "Mahatma Gandhi: war!" "But he was a pacifist." "Right! War!"
Part 2: Why Robots Go Astray, or The Cognitive Foundations of the Frankenstein Complex
1. What Is the Frankenstein Complex?
2. On Zygoons, Thricklers, and Kerpas
3. Theory of Mind
4. Theory of Mind and Categorization: Preliminary Implications
5. Concepts That Resist Categorization
6. . . . and the Stories They Make Possible
7. The Stories That Can Be Told about a Talking Needle
8. Asimov's "The Bicentennial Man"
9. Cognitive Construction of "Undoubted Facts": "The Bicentennial Man" and the Logic of Essentialism
10. Made to Rebel
11. Why Phyllis Is Still a Robot
12. . . . and Why Rei Toei Is Not
13. More Human Than Thou (Piercy's He, She and It)
14. Made to Pray
15. Made to Serve. Made to Obey. Made to Break Hearts
Part 3: Some Species of Nonsense
1. How Nonsense Makes Sense in The Hunting of the Snark
2. "Strings of Impossibilia" and What They Tell Us about the Value of Nonsense
3. "Painters of the Unimaginable," or More aboutReally Strange Concepts
Conclusion: Almost beyond Fiction
Notes
Bibliography
Index
