Cognition, Literature, and History [Hardcover]

Cognition, Literature, and Historymodels the ways in which cognitive and literary studies may collaborate and thereby mutually advance. It shows how understanding of underlying structures of mind can productively inform literary analysis and historical inquiry, and how formal and historical analysis of distinctive literary works can reciprocally enrich our understanding of those underlying structures. Applying the cognitive neuroscience of categorization, emotion, figurative thinking, narrativity, self-awareness, theory of mind, and wayfinding to the study of literary works and genres from diverse historical periods and cultures, the authors argue that literary experience proceeds from, qualitatively heightens, and selectively informs and even reforms our evolved and embodied capacities for thought and feeling. This volume investigates and locates the complex intersections of cognition, literature, and history in order to advance interdisciplinary discussion and research in poetics, literary history, and cognitive science.

Introduction: Integrating the Study of Cognition, Literature, and History Mark J. Bruhn  Part I: Kinds of (Literary) Cognition: Cognitive Genre Theory and History  1. Melodies of Mind: Poetic Forms as Cognitive Structures David Duff  2. Toward a Cognitive Sociology of Genres Michael Sinding  3. Novelty, Canonicity, and Competing Simulations in Childe Harolds PilgrimageNancy Easterlin  4. Reassessing the Concept of Ideology Transfer: On Evolved Cognitive Tendencies in the Literary Reception Process Katja Mellmann  Part II: The Moral of the Story: Affective Narratology  5. Conceptual Blending, Embodied Well-Being, and the Making of Twelfth-Century Secular Literature Donald R. Wehrs  6. Maternity, Mols(