Literature and Art as Cognitive Objects: From a Poetics of Language to a Poetics of Action [Hardcover]

Bringing together ideas from linguistics, philosophy and cognitive science, this book sets out a revolutionary theory of literature and art.Bringing together ideas from a range of disciplines, this book introduces a groundbreaking theory of literature and art as a cognitive and natural kind. It revolutionizes the interplay between literature, art and mind, and sketches new directions for the interaction between literary/art study and the empirical and cognitive sciences.Bringing together ideas from a range of disciplines, this book introduces a groundbreaking theory of literature and art as a cognitive and natural kind. It revolutionizes the interplay between literature, art and mind, and sketches new directions for the interaction between literary/art study and the empirical and cognitive sciences.What makes literature and art the distinct kinds of entities they are? Previous attempts to prove that artworks and literary texts are formally and structurally distinguishable from other objects have been misinterpreted to mean that any distinction between art and non-art must be largely sociological. This book takes a radically new approach to this long-standing question. Shifting the focus from the artwork itself to art as a case of human agency, it sets out a groundbreaking theory of literature and art as a single cognitive and natural entity. It argues that literature and art is neither sociologically determined nor a body of artefacts, but a unique type of action enabled by art-specific processes in the mind-internal and body-internal reality of human agents. With wide implications for existing debates, this book is essential reading for researchers and students in linguistics, philosophy and the cognitive sciences.Introduction; 1. A theory of blibs; 2. What sort of concept literature and art is not; 3. Literature and art as an action; 4. Literature and art as a cognitive and natural object; 5. How to solve the ontological puzzles; 6. Literature, art and relevance; lãs