Description
Book SynopsisTo speak of ''thinking with literature'' is to make the assumption that literature (in the broadest sense) is neither a side-show nor a side-issue in human cultures: it belongs to the spectrum of imaginative modes that includes both philosophical and scientific thought. Whether one regards it as a practice or as an archive, literature is highly pervasive, robust, enduring, and pregnant with values. Thinking with Literature argues that what it affords above all is a way of thinking, whether for writer, reader, or critic. Literature constitutes one of the prime instruments of cultural improvisation; it is the embodiment of a powerful, inventive, and ever-changing cognitive agency. As such, it invites a cognitive mode of criticism, one which asserts the priority of the individual literary work as a unique product of human cognition. In this book, discussions of topics, arguments, and hypotheses from the cognitive sciences, philosophy, and the theory of communication are woven into the fab
Trade ReviewTerence Cave, in Thinking with Literature ... goes inside our minds to map out a new "cognitive approach to literary studies". * Hal Jensen, Summer Books selection 2016, Times Literary Supplement *
the book offers many valuable insights about human cognition and embodiment * British Society of Literature and Science *
Table of ContentsPreface 1: Openings 2: Cognitive conversations 3: The balloon, the shed, and the bees 4: Literary affordances: culture as second nature 5: The balloon of the mind: literary imaginations 6: Cognitive figures 7: Cognitive mimesis: the cliff and the ballroom 8: The posture of reading: Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim 9: Literary values in a cognitive perspective A virtual manifesto for cognitive literary studies
