"Embodied Social Cognition and Comparative Literature: an Introduction" (original) (raw)
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Cognitive Literary StudieS emerged in the 1980s from the investigation of literature in relation to the embodied mind. Today we may define the field as an interdisciplinary initiative that integrates humanistic and scientific approaches and methodologies into a powerful tool to explore the complex dynamics between cognition and literature.1 In this chapter we provide readers with a sense of how some of the most significant lines of inquiry in cognitive literary studies have evolved during the last few years. We will highlight a few representative themes and studies, focusing on recent developments and what we see as new directions. Our objective is to emphasize both the continuity and the vitality of a field that is based on a dialogue among a variety of disciplines.2 i. Further expLoring disCourse And the embodied mind Several cognitive literary approaches have placed language and mental processing at the core of their inquiry, with humanists and scientists exploring literature both as a cognitive act but also as a key to understanding how the mind works. Over the last few years, researchers have stressed the need to consider cognitive processes and literary artifacts in relation to phenomenological and contextual factors, such as feeling or medium (the format in which stories come to us), in order to obtain a more coherent picture of literature as a discursive phenomenon.
2015
Literature flanked by cognition and history. With this programmatic approach co-editors Mark J. Bruhn and Donald R. Wehrs present the shared aim of the twelve essays in this volume, namely »to investigate the complex intersections of the three domains specified in the title-Cognition, Literature and Historyin order to advance the interdisciplinary discussion and research in poetics, literary history, and cognitive science.« (1) Taking literature as the point of departure and the focus of the analysis, the authors and editors seek to combine the concepts and models of cognitive science with historical methods in literary studies to provide an account of literature that bridges the divide between form or stylistics and history or context. This chasm of poetics and hermeneutics has marked the history of literary criticism, from structuralism to post-structuralism and new historicism, and has equally influenced the more recent field of cognitive literary studies. Since its early days in the 1990s, with the seminal work on the correlation of textual patterns and reading effects (Tsur 1992), and on shared structures of language and thought as products of a cognitively modern human mind (Turner 1991, 1996), two decades of intense work have followed, marked by multiple directions, as the christening of this new interdisciplinary field demonstrates:
Introduction to _The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies_ (2015)
Introducing the volume, this short chapter discusses the dynamic, relational nature of cognitive literary studies and the field's commitment to seeking points of convergence with a variety of theoretical paradigms in literary and cultural studies. It argues against "consilience" between literary studies and sciences, pointing out that the division between the sciences and the humanities, though far from ideal in many ways, reflects meaningful differences in ways of thinking about the world. It further stresses the openness and unpredictability of new areas of cognitive literary criticism, including cognitive disability studies, cognitive queer studies, and studies of the new unconscious, and it discusses the centrality of the study of emotions to a cognitivist inquiry. The introduction concludes by commenting on other thriving areas of cognitive theory, including those represented by the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image (SCSMI).
Of late, Professor Terence Cave has shown a growing interest in Cognitive Literary Studies: he co-edited with Karin Kukkonen, and Olivia Smith Reading Literature Cogntively (2014), a special issue of Paragraph: A Journal of Modern Critical Theory and has had a chapter entitled ‘Penser la littérature’ (Thinking with Literature) published in Interprétation littéraire et sciences cognitives (2016), a collection of scholarly articles edited by Françoise Lavocat. Thinking with Literature: Towards a Cognitive Criticism is a further attempt to chart the territory of cognitive literary theory. An interdisciplinary approach, no consonance of paradigms, an inspiration from cognitive science research, a concern for issues in literary studies, and the use of multiple prisms, seem to be the chief characteristics defining this ever-broadening category.
Bridging the two cultures: literary studies through the looking glass of cognitive science
Lingua. Language and Culture Lingua. , 2019
In this survey article, Jean-François Vernay purports to retrace the genesis of Cognitive Literary Studies and examine its potential to bring scientific insights to the study of literature. More specifically, his reflexion attempts to determine whether Cognitive Literary Studies is able to bridge “the excitement of connecting scientific principles with a love of literature”, as Peter Stockwell has it. Vernay explores the cognitive and literary intersections through which the cognitive paradigm in Literary Studies is helping to redefine the boundaries between literary and scientific knowledge, renew literary criticism and reconsider one of the defining traits of fiction. What might be dismissed as an umpteenth interdisciplinary approach may in fact hold the key to discarding blue-sky conceptions of fiction while giving teachers and book professionals a cogent and much-coveted argument for the usefulness of literature.
For the past two decades, the scholarly discussion about the merits of neuroscience and cognitive science for literary studies has been, in Germany at least, a rather heated affair. This debate, however, has been much less interdisciplinary than the subject matter would suggest and has mainly taken place within literary and cultural studies, often merely adapting scientific theories of the mind, the nervous system, and the brain, in order to make statements about either empathy within literary texts or the processes underlying their reception. The debate is, moreover, closely linked to a crisis of literary theory in general, especially regarding the demise of the postmodern deconstructionist paradigm and the call for a more scientific and factual approach to the object of studyliterature. Since the 1990s at least, deconstruction has frequently been dismissed as a mere stance of scepticism and relativism verging on randomness. Ever since, Cognitive Literary Studies (CLS) has promised to provide a way out of the impasse by offering a more objective approach to literary artefacts based on scientific knowledge and therefore on hard scientific facts. In this paper I will argue that it is necessary not only to rely on present-day cognitive science but to historicise the relationship between literature and science as well.