grazia pulvirenti | Catania - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Books by grazia pulvirenti
Global Journal of Medical Research, 2021
Recent theories within the avenue of the bio-cultural turn, and particularly about embodied cogni... more Recent theories within the avenue of the bio-cultural turn, and particularly about embodied cognition are forecasted in the anthropological, philosophical, physiological and scientific debate of the late 18th century in Germany. Philosopher and theologian Johann Gottfried Herder contributed to this discourse sigificantly, opening up new
perspectives on the link among thought and language and body. In this paper we aim at highlighting some core issues of Herders’s discourse about knowledge, perception and
cognition, that seem to anticipate some of the most recent 4E Cognition issues.
Koenigshausen und Neumann, 2008
During the 20th century the theme of fragmentation, symbol of modernity, is linked with the trans... more During the 20th century the theme of fragmentation, symbol of modernity, is linked with the transformation of the concept of totality that has started since romanticism. Out of this reflection new strategies of figurations are generated. Stated in her absence, the utopia of totality originates in the perception of the deconstruction of any organic, total hypothesis. This perception is hidden in the signs of disintegration, dynamic enagrams of a world in dissolution. In this sense, the fragment becomes an autonomous unit, part of a dissolved totality. The close-reading of works, where we can find the broken unity of the form and the onset of fragmentation (from Adalbert Stifter, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Georg Trakl and Franz Janowitz to Arnold Schönberg and Wassily Kandinsky), highlights the onset of new figures and images. Even though they represent the wound of fragmentation, they also manage to rebuilt a new space for the man who lives in a precarious and torn modernity.
Animals and Humans in German Literature, 1800-2000: Exploring the Great Divide, 2020
In Heinrich von Kleist’s masterwork Penthesilea (1806–1808), Amazons and Greek heroes rule the st... more In Heinrich von Kleist’s masterwork Penthesilea (1806–1808), Amazons
and Greek heroes rule the stage together with many different species of
animals. They are used not only metaphorically to enucleate and underlinehuman qualities or vices, but also as agents in hunting scenes. As regards the ideological issues implied by the hunting motif in
the anthropological and political discourse of Kleist’s epoch, we aim to
analyse in depth the function of game hunting in the play, and to go beyond the traditional exegetical approaches to the text in relation to the
presenceof animals.
Mimeis, 2018
Tramite la creazione di storie, l’uomo organizza l’esperienza di sé e del mondo, il proprio vissu... more Tramite la creazione di storie, l’uomo organizza l’esperienza di sé e del mondo, il proprio vissuto, biologico e immaginario, la propria identità. E, a volte, attinge alla bellezza, nella configurazione stilistico-simbolica del testo letterario e nella sua fruizione. In Storie Menti Mondi, l’esperienza letteraria viene indagata come fenomeno dinamico, fisiologico, emotivo e cognitivo, in relazione ai processi mentali che generano il proprium di ogni creazione artistica e lo riconfigurano nell’atto della lettura. A partire dalle specificità linguistiche, formali, stilistiche e simboliche di un’opera, la neuroermeneutica consente di interpretare il testo come dispositivo
di ricerca antropologica, in quanto spazio privilegiato per una riflessione sui processi di ordine fisico, emotivo e cognitivo implicati dall’immaginazione tanto nell’atto creativo che in quello della fruizione estetica. Alla luce di tale approccio, che tiene conto dell’interazione fra ermeneutica, antropologia letteraria, studi sulla cognizione, sulla simulazione incarnata, sull’empatia e
sui correlati neurali dell’esperienza estetica, è possibile dischiudere nuove prospettive critiche in merito all’esegesi del testo, come anche in relazione alla cultura in cui ogni opera s’inscrive, e offrire nuovi spunti di riflessione sui processi della mente impegnata nell’immaginazione creativa e fruitiva di storie: infiniti mondi, che si condensano e riaffiorano dalle pagine, tramite
cui l’essere umano tenta di costruire significati sempre nuovi per il suo essere nel mondo, in una esauribile tensione verso la bellezza.
Mimesis , 2018
La poetologia della conoscenza di Heinrich von Kleist si configura come un viaggio nella mente um... more La poetologia della conoscenza di Heinrich von Kleist si configura come un viaggio nella mente umana, nelle sue capacità conoscitive e immaginative, nelle sue labilità e nei suoi trascendimenti. La totalità romantica è infranta e il linguaggio è il materiale magmatico di attraversamento del reale e della mente: in ciò si esprime un progetto epistemico che, muovendo dall’orizzonte biologico della corporeità, si realizza, in virtù della forza poietica del linguaggio, nella narrazione.
Papers by grazia pulvirenti
Following Wolfgang Iser’s studies, literary criticism could no longer avoid a confrontation with ... more Following Wolfgang Iser’s studies, literary criticism could no longer avoid a confrontation with the phenomenology of the act of reading. This has led the analysis of a literary text towards new researches regarding the reader’s response theory . In particular, it is impossible to define the field of literary investigation, its coordinates and characteristics, without considering the anthropological dimention which defines the epistemological nature of literature itself. We propose in this study a new approach that we call “neurohermeneutic approach”. Unlike an analytical or descriptive approach, the neurohermeneutic approach investigates broth the relations that the reader’s mind establishes with the text figurations and how these figurations stimulates the reader’s mind in that inexhaustible, always new and surprising act of the reading. A partire dagli studi di Wolfgang Iser, la riflessione critica non ha piu potuto evitare il confronto con la fenomenologia dell’atto della lettur...
Goethe-Lexicon of philosophical concepts, Dec 19, 2022
Einbildungskraft (imagination) is a multifaceted mental faculty in Goethe’s theoretical writings ... more Einbildungskraft (imagination) is a multifaceted mental faculty in Goethe’s theoretical writings and poetic works that is non-systematic and rich in aporias. At work in both cognitive processes and artistic production, it becomes a defining concept in Goethe’s creative understanding of natural and aesthetic processes. Einbildungskraft serves as a faculty that presides over nature, the human mind, and the arts as a source of interdisciplinary knowledge. As a pre-noetic power, moreover, it also manifests the poietic force of language. By creatively expanding the Kantian distinction between the productive and reproductive imagination, Goethe theorizes a third kind of Einbildungskraft at work in poetic language with an internal law (Gesetzlichkeit) that “circumspectively surveys” the inner and outer worlds. As a kind of analogical thinking, this “umsichtige Einbildungskraft” (surveying imagination) participates in cognitive processes by actively elaborating thought, affect, vision, and memory. And as an artistic power, it mirrors in metaphorical language the organic forces of nature, which share the same principles of human life: synthesis, expansion, and transformation. According to Goethe, Einbildungskraft is the faculty responsible for shaping perceptual inputs, affects, memories, and mental images into artistic and verbal forms, thereby reconfiguring all the fragmented pieces of existence into an organic system that represents reality in its ontological essence.
Lili-zeitschrift Fur Literaturwissenschaft Und Linguistik, Dec 1, 2021
Within the heuristic frame of the »Biocultural Turn«, this paper aims to propose a new transdisci... more Within the heuristic frame of the »Biocultural Turn«, this paper aims to propose a new transdisciplinary approach: the Neurohermeneutics of Suspicion . Its purpose is to investigate the literary text as a unique cognitive dynamic device with multilayered meanings and a metaphorical undercurrent, both responsive to the functioning system of the human mind. This implies considering the literary text as an anthropological device, which cognitively guides the imaginative, emotional and experiential responses of the reader by means of the author’s linguistic, stylistic and rhetoric choices, mirroring cognitive, emotional, and imaginative human processes. We suggest that particularly Ricoeur’s idea of a ›suspicious stance‹ opens a new way to hermeneutics, allowing to refigure the process of reading as a creative and ›playful‹ act, and to restore the value of subjectivity in the process of deciphering fictional worlds conveying ever new meanings to texts. Innerhalb des heuristischen Rahmens des »Biocultural Turn« möchte dieser Beitrag einen neuen transdisziplinären Ansatz vorschlagen: die Neurohermeneutik des Verdachts. Neurohermeneutik zielt darauf hin, den literarischen Text als ein einzigartiges kognitives dynamisches Instrument mit vielschichtigen Bedeutungen und einer metaphorischen Unterströmung zu untersuchen, die das Funktionssystem des menschlichen Geistes unterschiedlich herausfordern. Dies bedeutet, den literarischen Text als anthropologisches Instrument zu betrachten, das die imaginativen, emotionalen und erfahrungsbezogenen Reaktionen des Lesers durch die sprachlichen, stilistischen und rhetorischen Entscheidungen des Autors steuert, dank der Widerspiegelung jener sprachlichen Merkmale mit den kognitiven, emotionalen und imaginativen Prozessen. Wir behaupten, dass insbesondere Ricoeurs Idee einer »misstrauischen Haltung« der Neurohermeneutik einen neuen Weg bahnt, der es erlaubt, den Prozess des Lesens als einen kreativen und »spielerischen« Akt neu zu verstehen und den Wert der Subjektivität im Prozess der Entschlüsselung fiktionaler Welten wiederherzustellen.
PsyCh journal, Jan 14, 2021
During the 18th century, debates about what constituted the sublime flourished in Europe, and par... more During the 18th century, debates about what constituted the sublime flourished in Europe, and particularly in Germany. These debates were nourished by two different visions: The Kantian concept supposed that the sublime is supra‐sensible and rooted in reason (Logos) rather than in the object, thus provoking a mental state of tension between nature and art; Edmund Burke's concept, on the other hand, conceived of the sublime as a bodily immersive experience, which we here define as “sensitive” sublime. In summary, Burke's view of the sublime is rooted in the senses and not in the power of reason, unlike Kant's. This was to disrupt the mainstream ideas of that time, unconsciously anticipating some of the recent neuroaesthetic acquisitions regarding the central role played by the sensory apparatus in the experience of beauty and of the sublime.
Kleist-Jahrbuch 2022, 2022
Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts
Einbildungskraft (imagination) is a multifaceted mental faculty in Goethe’s theoretical writings ... more Einbildungskraft (imagination) is a multifaceted mental faculty in Goethe’s theoretical writings and poetic works that is non-systematic and rich in aporias. At work in both cognitive processes and artistic production, it becomes a defining concept in Goethe’s creative understanding of natural and aesthetic processes. Einbildungskraft serves as a faculty that presides over nature, the human mind, and the arts as a source of interdisciplinary knowledge. As a pre-noetic power, moreover, it also manifests the poietic force of language. By creatively expanding the Kantian distinction between the productive and reproductive imagination, Goethe theorizes a third kind of Einbildungskraft at work in poetic language with an internal law (Gesetzlichkeit) that “circumspectively surveys” the inner and outer worlds. As a kind of analogical thinking, this “umsichtige Einbildungskraft” (surveying imagination) participates in cognitive processes by actively elaborating thought, affect, vision, and ...
Königshausen & Neumann, 2008
Cognitive Philology, 2019
This paper is intended to draw attention to the theories of Johann Gottfried Herder, German philo... more This paper is intended to draw attention to the theories of Johann Gottfried Herder, German philosopher, poet and theologist associated with the Enlightenment (Aufklärung) period, with reference to the modern cognitive research. We will demonstrate how Herder’s intuitions anticipated some important concepts regarding the themes of embodied mind and embodied cognition, which became subject of important philosophical debates of the 20th century.
Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 2022
Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience
According to ancient texts on poetics, the concept of representation is deeply bound to that of “... more According to ancient texts on poetics, the concept of representation is deeply bound to that of “mimesis;” this last was intended in two main ways: as “imitation” and as “world construction.” In Aristotle's Poetics, mimesis is theorized as the main form of “world simulation,” giving rise to the complex universe of fiction. The concept of simulation plays a pivotal role in the neurocognitive theories on the embodied mind: within this frame, embodied simulation is intended as a functional prelinguistic activation of the human sensorimotor mechanism. This happens not only with regard to intercorporeality and intersubjectivity in the real world but also in relation to the process of imagination giving rise to literary imagery and to the reader's reception of the fictional world, since human beings share a common sensorimotor apparatus. Imagination is a central concept in the recent neurocognitive studies since it plays a core role in human life and in artistic production and rec...
PsyCh Journal
During the 18th century, debates about what constituted the sublime flourished in Europe, and par... more During the 18th century, debates about what constituted the sublime flourished in Europe, and particularly in Germany. These debates were nourished by two different visions: The Kantian concept supposed that the sublime is supra-sensible and rooted in reason (Logos) rather than in the object, thus provoking a mental state of tension between nature and art; Edmund Burke's concept, on the other hand, conceived of the sublime as a bodily immersive experience, which we here define as "sensitive" sublime. In summary, Burke's view of the sublime is rooted in the senses and not in the power of reason, unlike Kant's. This was to disrupt the mainstream ideas of that time, unconsciously anticipating some of the recent neuroaesthetic acquisitions regarding the central role played by the sensory apparatus in the experience of beauty and of the sublime.
Following Wolfgang Iser’s studies, literary criticism could no longer avoid a confrontation with ... more Following Wolfgang Iser’s studies, literary criticism could no longer avoid a confrontation with the phenomenology of the act of reading. This has led the analysis of a literary text towards new researches regarding the reader’s response theory . In particular, it is impossible to define the field of literary investigation, its coordinates and characteristics, without considering the anthropological dimention which defines the epistemological nature of literature itself. We propose in this study a new approach that we call “neurohermeneutic approach”. Unlike an analytical or descriptive approach, the neurohermeneutic approach investigates broth the relations that the reader’s mind establishes with the text figurations and how these figurations stimulates the reader’s mind in that inexhaustible, always new and surprising act of the reading. A partire dagli studi di Wolfgang Iser, la riflessione critica non ha piu potuto evitare il confronto con la fenomenologia dell’atto della lettur...
Recensione di Gambino, Renata e Grazia Pulvirenti.Storie menti mondi. Approccio neuroermeneutico ... more Recensione di Gambino, Renata e Grazia Pulvirenti.Storie menti mondi. Approccio neuroermeneutico alla letteratura. Mimesis, 2018Review of Gambino, Renata and Grazia Pulvirenti.Storie menti mondi. Approccio neuroermeneutico alla letteratura. Mimesis, 2018
Global Journal of Medical Research, 2021
Recent theories within the avenue of the bio-cultural turn, and particularly about embodied cogni... more Recent theories within the avenue of the bio-cultural turn, and particularly about embodied cognition are forecasted in the anthropological, philosophical, physiological and scientific debate of the late 18th century in Germany. Philosopher and theologian Johann Gottfried Herder contributed to this discourse sigificantly, opening up new
perspectives on the link among thought and language and body. In this paper we aim at highlighting some core issues of Herders’s discourse about knowledge, perception and
cognition, that seem to anticipate some of the most recent 4E Cognition issues.
Koenigshausen und Neumann, 2008
During the 20th century the theme of fragmentation, symbol of modernity, is linked with the trans... more During the 20th century the theme of fragmentation, symbol of modernity, is linked with the transformation of the concept of totality that has started since romanticism. Out of this reflection new strategies of figurations are generated. Stated in her absence, the utopia of totality originates in the perception of the deconstruction of any organic, total hypothesis. This perception is hidden in the signs of disintegration, dynamic enagrams of a world in dissolution. In this sense, the fragment becomes an autonomous unit, part of a dissolved totality. The close-reading of works, where we can find the broken unity of the form and the onset of fragmentation (from Adalbert Stifter, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Georg Trakl and Franz Janowitz to Arnold Schönberg and Wassily Kandinsky), highlights the onset of new figures and images. Even though they represent the wound of fragmentation, they also manage to rebuilt a new space for the man who lives in a precarious and torn modernity.
Animals and Humans in German Literature, 1800-2000: Exploring the Great Divide, 2020
In Heinrich von Kleist’s masterwork Penthesilea (1806–1808), Amazons and Greek heroes rule the st... more In Heinrich von Kleist’s masterwork Penthesilea (1806–1808), Amazons
and Greek heroes rule the stage together with many different species of
animals. They are used not only metaphorically to enucleate and underlinehuman qualities or vices, but also as agents in hunting scenes. As regards the ideological issues implied by the hunting motif in
the anthropological and political discourse of Kleist’s epoch, we aim to
analyse in depth the function of game hunting in the play, and to go beyond the traditional exegetical approaches to the text in relation to the
presenceof animals.
Mimeis, 2018
Tramite la creazione di storie, l’uomo organizza l’esperienza di sé e del mondo, il proprio vissu... more Tramite la creazione di storie, l’uomo organizza l’esperienza di sé e del mondo, il proprio vissuto, biologico e immaginario, la propria identità. E, a volte, attinge alla bellezza, nella configurazione stilistico-simbolica del testo letterario e nella sua fruizione. In Storie Menti Mondi, l’esperienza letteraria viene indagata come fenomeno dinamico, fisiologico, emotivo e cognitivo, in relazione ai processi mentali che generano il proprium di ogni creazione artistica e lo riconfigurano nell’atto della lettura. A partire dalle specificità linguistiche, formali, stilistiche e simboliche di un’opera, la neuroermeneutica consente di interpretare il testo come dispositivo
di ricerca antropologica, in quanto spazio privilegiato per una riflessione sui processi di ordine fisico, emotivo e cognitivo implicati dall’immaginazione tanto nell’atto creativo che in quello della fruizione estetica. Alla luce di tale approccio, che tiene conto dell’interazione fra ermeneutica, antropologia letteraria, studi sulla cognizione, sulla simulazione incarnata, sull’empatia e
sui correlati neurali dell’esperienza estetica, è possibile dischiudere nuove prospettive critiche in merito all’esegesi del testo, come anche in relazione alla cultura in cui ogni opera s’inscrive, e offrire nuovi spunti di riflessione sui processi della mente impegnata nell’immaginazione creativa e fruitiva di storie: infiniti mondi, che si condensano e riaffiorano dalle pagine, tramite
cui l’essere umano tenta di costruire significati sempre nuovi per il suo essere nel mondo, in una esauribile tensione verso la bellezza.
Mimesis , 2018
La poetologia della conoscenza di Heinrich von Kleist si configura come un viaggio nella mente um... more La poetologia della conoscenza di Heinrich von Kleist si configura come un viaggio nella mente umana, nelle sue capacità conoscitive e immaginative, nelle sue labilità e nei suoi trascendimenti. La totalità romantica è infranta e il linguaggio è il materiale magmatico di attraversamento del reale e della mente: in ciò si esprime un progetto epistemico che, muovendo dall’orizzonte biologico della corporeità, si realizza, in virtù della forza poietica del linguaggio, nella narrazione.
Following Wolfgang Iser’s studies, literary criticism could no longer avoid a confrontation with ... more Following Wolfgang Iser’s studies, literary criticism could no longer avoid a confrontation with the phenomenology of the act of reading. This has led the analysis of a literary text towards new researches regarding the reader’s response theory . In particular, it is impossible to define the field of literary investigation, its coordinates and characteristics, without considering the anthropological dimention which defines the epistemological nature of literature itself. We propose in this study a new approach that we call “neurohermeneutic approach”. Unlike an analytical or descriptive approach, the neurohermeneutic approach investigates broth the relations that the reader’s mind establishes with the text figurations and how these figurations stimulates the reader’s mind in that inexhaustible, always new and surprising act of the reading. A partire dagli studi di Wolfgang Iser, la riflessione critica non ha piu potuto evitare il confronto con la fenomenologia dell’atto della lettur...
Goethe-Lexicon of philosophical concepts, Dec 19, 2022
Einbildungskraft (imagination) is a multifaceted mental faculty in Goethe’s theoretical writings ... more Einbildungskraft (imagination) is a multifaceted mental faculty in Goethe’s theoretical writings and poetic works that is non-systematic and rich in aporias. At work in both cognitive processes and artistic production, it becomes a defining concept in Goethe’s creative understanding of natural and aesthetic processes. Einbildungskraft serves as a faculty that presides over nature, the human mind, and the arts as a source of interdisciplinary knowledge. As a pre-noetic power, moreover, it also manifests the poietic force of language. By creatively expanding the Kantian distinction between the productive and reproductive imagination, Goethe theorizes a third kind of Einbildungskraft at work in poetic language with an internal law (Gesetzlichkeit) that “circumspectively surveys” the inner and outer worlds. As a kind of analogical thinking, this “umsichtige Einbildungskraft” (surveying imagination) participates in cognitive processes by actively elaborating thought, affect, vision, and memory. And as an artistic power, it mirrors in metaphorical language the organic forces of nature, which share the same principles of human life: synthesis, expansion, and transformation. According to Goethe, Einbildungskraft is the faculty responsible for shaping perceptual inputs, affects, memories, and mental images into artistic and verbal forms, thereby reconfiguring all the fragmented pieces of existence into an organic system that represents reality in its ontological essence.
Lili-zeitschrift Fur Literaturwissenschaft Und Linguistik, Dec 1, 2021
Within the heuristic frame of the »Biocultural Turn«, this paper aims to propose a new transdisci... more Within the heuristic frame of the »Biocultural Turn«, this paper aims to propose a new transdisciplinary approach: the Neurohermeneutics of Suspicion . Its purpose is to investigate the literary text as a unique cognitive dynamic device with multilayered meanings and a metaphorical undercurrent, both responsive to the functioning system of the human mind. This implies considering the literary text as an anthropological device, which cognitively guides the imaginative, emotional and experiential responses of the reader by means of the author’s linguistic, stylistic and rhetoric choices, mirroring cognitive, emotional, and imaginative human processes. We suggest that particularly Ricoeur’s idea of a ›suspicious stance‹ opens a new way to hermeneutics, allowing to refigure the process of reading as a creative and ›playful‹ act, and to restore the value of subjectivity in the process of deciphering fictional worlds conveying ever new meanings to texts. Innerhalb des heuristischen Rahmens des »Biocultural Turn« möchte dieser Beitrag einen neuen transdisziplinären Ansatz vorschlagen: die Neurohermeneutik des Verdachts. Neurohermeneutik zielt darauf hin, den literarischen Text als ein einzigartiges kognitives dynamisches Instrument mit vielschichtigen Bedeutungen und einer metaphorischen Unterströmung zu untersuchen, die das Funktionssystem des menschlichen Geistes unterschiedlich herausfordern. Dies bedeutet, den literarischen Text als anthropologisches Instrument zu betrachten, das die imaginativen, emotionalen und erfahrungsbezogenen Reaktionen des Lesers durch die sprachlichen, stilistischen und rhetorischen Entscheidungen des Autors steuert, dank der Widerspiegelung jener sprachlichen Merkmale mit den kognitiven, emotionalen und imaginativen Prozessen. Wir behaupten, dass insbesondere Ricoeurs Idee einer »misstrauischen Haltung« der Neurohermeneutik einen neuen Weg bahnt, der es erlaubt, den Prozess des Lesens als einen kreativen und »spielerischen« Akt neu zu verstehen und den Wert der Subjektivität im Prozess der Entschlüsselung fiktionaler Welten wiederherzustellen.
PsyCh journal, Jan 14, 2021
During the 18th century, debates about what constituted the sublime flourished in Europe, and par... more During the 18th century, debates about what constituted the sublime flourished in Europe, and particularly in Germany. These debates were nourished by two different visions: The Kantian concept supposed that the sublime is supra‐sensible and rooted in reason (Logos) rather than in the object, thus provoking a mental state of tension between nature and art; Edmund Burke's concept, on the other hand, conceived of the sublime as a bodily immersive experience, which we here define as “sensitive” sublime. In summary, Burke's view of the sublime is rooted in the senses and not in the power of reason, unlike Kant's. This was to disrupt the mainstream ideas of that time, unconsciously anticipating some of the recent neuroaesthetic acquisitions regarding the central role played by the sensory apparatus in the experience of beauty and of the sublime.
Kleist-Jahrbuch 2022, 2022
Goethe-Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts
Einbildungskraft (imagination) is a multifaceted mental faculty in Goethe’s theoretical writings ... more Einbildungskraft (imagination) is a multifaceted mental faculty in Goethe’s theoretical writings and poetic works that is non-systematic and rich in aporias. At work in both cognitive processes and artistic production, it becomes a defining concept in Goethe’s creative understanding of natural and aesthetic processes. Einbildungskraft serves as a faculty that presides over nature, the human mind, and the arts as a source of interdisciplinary knowledge. As a pre-noetic power, moreover, it also manifests the poietic force of language. By creatively expanding the Kantian distinction between the productive and reproductive imagination, Goethe theorizes a third kind of Einbildungskraft at work in poetic language with an internal law (Gesetzlichkeit) that “circumspectively surveys” the inner and outer worlds. As a kind of analogical thinking, this “umsichtige Einbildungskraft” (surveying imagination) participates in cognitive processes by actively elaborating thought, affect, vision, and ...
Königshausen & Neumann, 2008
Cognitive Philology, 2019
This paper is intended to draw attention to the theories of Johann Gottfried Herder, German philo... more This paper is intended to draw attention to the theories of Johann Gottfried Herder, German philosopher, poet and theologist associated with the Enlightenment (Aufklärung) period, with reference to the modern cognitive research. We will demonstrate how Herder’s intuitions anticipated some important concepts regarding the themes of embodied mind and embodied cognition, which became subject of important philosophical debates of the 20th century.
Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 2022
Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience
According to ancient texts on poetics, the concept of representation is deeply bound to that of “... more According to ancient texts on poetics, the concept of representation is deeply bound to that of “mimesis;” this last was intended in two main ways: as “imitation” and as “world construction.” In Aristotle's Poetics, mimesis is theorized as the main form of “world simulation,” giving rise to the complex universe of fiction. The concept of simulation plays a pivotal role in the neurocognitive theories on the embodied mind: within this frame, embodied simulation is intended as a functional prelinguistic activation of the human sensorimotor mechanism. This happens not only with regard to intercorporeality and intersubjectivity in the real world but also in relation to the process of imagination giving rise to literary imagery and to the reader's reception of the fictional world, since human beings share a common sensorimotor apparatus. Imagination is a central concept in the recent neurocognitive studies since it plays a core role in human life and in artistic production and rec...
PsyCh Journal
During the 18th century, debates about what constituted the sublime flourished in Europe, and par... more During the 18th century, debates about what constituted the sublime flourished in Europe, and particularly in Germany. These debates were nourished by two different visions: The Kantian concept supposed that the sublime is supra-sensible and rooted in reason (Logos) rather than in the object, thus provoking a mental state of tension between nature and art; Edmund Burke's concept, on the other hand, conceived of the sublime as a bodily immersive experience, which we here define as "sensitive" sublime. In summary, Burke's view of the sublime is rooted in the senses and not in the power of reason, unlike Kant's. This was to disrupt the mainstream ideas of that time, unconsciously anticipating some of the recent neuroaesthetic acquisitions regarding the central role played by the sensory apparatus in the experience of beauty and of the sublime.
Following Wolfgang Iser’s studies, literary criticism could no longer avoid a confrontation with ... more Following Wolfgang Iser’s studies, literary criticism could no longer avoid a confrontation with the phenomenology of the act of reading. This has led the analysis of a literary text towards new researches regarding the reader’s response theory . In particular, it is impossible to define the field of literary investigation, its coordinates and characteristics, without considering the anthropological dimention which defines the epistemological nature of literature itself. We propose in this study a new approach that we call “neurohermeneutic approach”. Unlike an analytical or descriptive approach, the neurohermeneutic approach investigates broth the relations that the reader’s mind establishes with the text figurations and how these figurations stimulates the reader’s mind in that inexhaustible, always new and surprising act of the reading. A partire dagli studi di Wolfgang Iser, la riflessione critica non ha piu potuto evitare il confronto con la fenomenologia dell’atto della lettur...
Recensione di Gambino, Renata e Grazia Pulvirenti.Storie menti mondi. Approccio neuroermeneutico ... more Recensione di Gambino, Renata e Grazia Pulvirenti.Storie menti mondi. Approccio neuroermeneutico alla letteratura. Mimesis, 2018Review of Gambino, Renata and Grazia Pulvirenti.Storie menti mondi. Approccio neuroermeneutico alla letteratura. Mimesis, 2018
In this paper we argue that Ricoeur’s concept of suspicion is significant for present-day neuroco... more In this paper we argue that Ricoeur’s concept of suspicion is significant for present-day neurocognitive studies on literature, with regard to the issues of embodiment, bodily simulation, and interpretation of textual latent meanings. Ricoeur’s practice of suspicion is one of the two poles of our present inquiry on literary texts, being the second a neurohermeneutic approach that we have developed in past studies (Gambino and Pulvirenti, Storie, menti, mondi ; “Neurohermeneutics. A Transdisciplinary Approach to Literature”). We will refer to Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of suspicion, a principle which is often quoted in literary critical discourse but not always precisely defined, considering it as an act of mistrustful interpretation, which bases on intersubjectivity and aims to disclose latent and hidden meanings in sign systems, specifically in literary texts, which is the field of our inquiry. In the perspective of what we here define as neurohermeneutics of suspicion , the reader b...
Global Journal of Medical Research
Recent theories within the avenue of the bio-cultural turn, and particularly about embodied cogni... more Recent theories within the avenue of the bio-cultural turn, and particularly about embodied cognition are forecasted in the anthropological, philosophical, physiological and scientific debate of the late 18th century in Germany. Philosopher and theologian Johann Gottfried Herder contributed to this discourse sigificantly, opening up new perspectives on the link among thought and language and body. In this paper we aim at highlighting some core issues of Herders’s discourse about knowledge, perception and cognition, that seem to anticipate some of the most recent 4E Cognition issues.
Humanidades: revista de la Universidad de Montevideo
Our work is based on the hypothesis of an existing interconnection between symbolic-metaphoric el... more Our work is based on the hypothesis of an existing interconnection between symbolic-metaphoric elements of the literary text and a series of mind patterns. These compress percep-tion and experience through the emergent process of conceptual blending triggering the seman-tic process during the creative act of poiesis. This enquiry focuses on the use of a peculiar rhetor-ical figure in an exemplary literary text of the famous German poet Goethe. We will try to point out the allegorical function of the scene dedicated to the «Mothers' Kingdom», in his Faust II, as a powerful poetical meta-reflection on imagination, cognition and poetics itself.
Enthymema XXII, 2018
Recensione di Gambino, Renata e Grazia Pulvirenti. Storie menti mondi. Approccio neuroermeneutico... more Recensione di Gambino, Renata e Grazia Pulvirenti. Storie menti mondi. Approccio neuroermeneutico alla letteratura. Mimesis, 2018, di Stefano Ballerio
Humanidades: revista de la Universidad de Montevideo, 2019
Desde 2014, Catania se ha ido convirtiendo en una de las sedes del pensamiento interdisciplinar m... more Desde 2014, Catania se ha ido convirtiendo en una de las sedes del pensamiento interdisciplinar más innovadoras dentro de los estudios literarios. En ese año aconteció por primera vez el Diálogo de Neurohumanidades, evento que visibilizó la labor que durante largo tiempo venía consolidando el núcleo de estudiosos de esta universidad. El evento logró reunir algunos de los grandes nombres que están hoy escribiendo la historia de las relaciones entre el cerebro y la literatura, y que son insignes representantes de varias de las aristas que articulan el recurrido edificio de los estudios cognitivos: Mark Turner, Semir Zeki, Gerard Steen Arthur M. Jacobs y otros líderes en sus ámbitos de investigación acudían a la cita siciliana que se sigue alojando en la Università degli Studi di Catania cada primavera desde entonces. En esta institución desarrollan su labor Renata Gambino y Grazia Pulvirenti, las audaces autoras de Storie menti mondi, la obra que aquí nos ocupa, y que no es sino el fruto de estos largos años de reflexión cruzada con científicos y académicos llegados de la neurología, la física, la lingüística cognitiva, los estudios empíricos de la literatura o la estética.
Ch. M. Wieland, Jinnistan. Fiabe, a cura di Renata Gambino, 2020
Nella raccolta di fiabe Jinnistan. Fiabe, la prosa rococò di Wieland ci trasporta in un mondo inc... more Nella raccolta di fiabe Jinnistan. Fiabe, la prosa rococò di Wieland ci trasporta in un mondo incantato, dove l’antico Oriente, mediato da Le mille e una notte, insieme all’Egitto dei misteri, affiorano attraverso una coulisse settecentesca d’ispirazione francese, popolata da geni, fate, maghi, ondine, silfidi, principi e regine, insieme a creature d’invenzione, unicorni e draghi alati, talismani, orologi che si trasformano in splendide fanciulle, statue che si animano, mostruose figure che assumono tratti umani e delicatissimi. La metamorfosi è il tema ricorrente, non solo come espediente narrativo, quanto anche come veicolo di uno dei concetti fondamentali che stanno a cuore a Wieland, ovvero quello dell’evoluzione dell’essere umano verso un orizzonte di perfettibilità che la realtà sembra negare, ma che la natura vivente e palpitante delle creature fantastiche fa emergere come unico vero scopo dell’esistenza. Questo filo conduttore, che si manifesta tanto a livello tematico, quanto come dinamica narrativa, viene ripreso da Emanuel Schikaneder nella complessa elaborazione tematica de Il flauto magico, Singspiel ricco di simboli, geroglifici, riti e misteri, culminanti nella raffigurazione dell’umanità nei suoi più elevati raggiungimenti spirituali. Il libretto, frutto della collaborazione di Emanuel Schikaneder con Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, per irripetibile miracolo d’arte e ispirazione, assurge a rarefatta translitterazione dei più nobili ideali illuministico-massonici di compiuta umanità, fratellanza, libertà, perfettibilità del genere umano, sogno di un destino di felicità universale, celebrazione rituale di purificazione ed elevazione, essenza del teatro nelle sue più arcaiche valenze pedagogiche e nella sua più moderna progettualità utopica.
Giuseppe Ruggieri (a cura di) La preghiera, 2012
Il senso religioso prega, come il pensiero pensa. Con questa riflessione, Novalis ci pone di fron... more Il senso religioso prega, come il pensiero pensa. Con questa riflessione,
Novalis ci pone di fronte a questioni estreme, che riguardano il
mistero di due delle attività principali dell’uomo di ogni epoca storica
e di ogni latitudine geografica: il pensiero e la preghiera. La
preghiera appare nella prospettiva novalisiana come un’attività fisiologica, diremmo oggi, innata e inscritta nel DNA dell’uomo, come il
pensare lo è per il cervello. Il presente testo cerca di definire il senso o sentimento religioso, alla luce del quale comprendere meglio l’accezione che Novalis attribuisce al termine preghiera.
Liber 127 fasc. III, 2020
Il volume "Storie, menti, mondi", di R. Gambino e G. Pulvirenti, raccoglie il frutto di un lavoro... more Il volume "Storie, menti, mondi", di R. Gambino e G. Pulvirenti, raccoglie il frutto di un lavoro di tessitura tra discipline sempre più dialoganti come neuroscienze, estetica e filosofia, studi cognitivi e fisiologia, letteratura e biologia. L'approccio neuroermeneutico alla letteratura intende riportare al centro dell'attenzione l'interazione tra quelle che tradizionalmente si definiscono come tre realtà separate, ovvero mente, corpo e ambiente, che costituiscono una unica entità percipiente. La ricerca del senso operata dal lettore mentre "abita" il testo, si muove seguendo o attivando le stesse dinamiche relazionali usate nell'interazione con il mondo reale, e instaurando la cosiddetta simulazione incarnata, che caratterizza i processi simulativi nella lettura e si attiva quando leggiamo di azioni o eventi nel mondo finzionale.
