Mindful Aesthetics
Subtitle: Literature and the Science of Mind
By: edited by Chris Danta and Helen Groth
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 2013
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 236
ISBN-13: 9781441102867
Subjects: Literature and science; Cognition in literature; Philosophy of mind in literature; Aesthetics in literature; LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory
Description: "In the last few decades, literary critics have increasingly drawn insights from cognitive neuroscience to deepen and clarify our understanding of literary representations of mind. This cognitive turn has been equally generative and contentious. While cognitive literary studies has reinforced how central the concept of mind is to aesthetic practice from the classical period to the present, critics have questioned its literalism and selective borrowing of scientific authority. Mindful Aesthetics presents both these perspectives as part of a broader consideration of the ongoing and vital importance of shifting concepts of mind to both literary and critical practice. This collection contributes to the forging of a 'new interdisciplinarity,' to paraphrase Alan Richardson's recent preface to the Neural Sublime, that is more concerned with addressing how, rather than why, we should navigate the increasingly narrow gap between the humanities and the sciences"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note:; title: Introduction: Between MindsChris Danta and Helen GrothSection One: TheoriaChapter 1. Psychology and Literature: Mindful Close ReadingBrian BoydChapter 2. Vitalism and Theoria Claire ColebrookChapter 3. Continental Drift: The Clash Between Literary Theory and Cognitive Literary Studies Paul SheehanChapter 4. Thinking with the World: Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello Anthony UhlmannSection Two: Minds in HistoryChapter 5. 'The brain is a book which reads itself': Cultured Brains and Reductive Materialism from Diderot to J. J. C. SmartCharles T. WolfeChapter 6. Muted Literary Minds: James Sully, George Eliot and Psychologised Aesthetics in the Nineteenth Century Penelope HoneChapter 7. The Mind as Palimpsest: Art, Dreaming and James Sully's Aesthetics of LatencyHelen GrothChapter 8. The Flame's Lover: The Modernist Mind of William Carlos WilliamsMark StevenSection Three: Contemporary Literary MindsChapter 9. 'The Creation of Space': Narrative Strategies, Group Agency, and Skill in Lloyd Jones's The Book of Fame John Sutton and Evelyn TribbleChapter 10. Reproductive Aesthetics Stephen MueckeChapter 11. Distended Moments in Neuronarrative: Character Consciousness and the Cognitive Sciences in Ian McEwan's Saturday Hannah CourtneyChapter 12. A Loose Democracy of the Skull: Characterology and NeuroscienceJulian MurphetAfterword Paul GilesIndex.