A Biocultural Approach to Literary Theory and Interpretation

A Biocultural Approach to Literary Theory and Interpretation
Author: Nancy Easterlin
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2012-05-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1421404729

"A Biocultural Approach to Literary Theory and Interpretation offers a fresh and reasoned approach to literary studies that at once preserves the central importance that interpretation plays in the humanities and embraces the exciting developments of the cognitive sciences.

Knowledge, Understanding, Well-Being

Knowledge, Understanding, Well-Being
Author: Nancy Easterlin
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-08-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781478006176

Cognitive literary studies occupies a special position in debates over the purpose of higher education and the value of the humanities. Through its varied interdisciplinary commitments, cognitive literary studies offers ways to discover the processes, forms of knowledge, and ethical function of literary experience. Contributors to this issue argue that the humanities are not a trivial pursuit by theorizing and documenting the dynamic interactions of the individuals, groups, texts, and environments that cumulatively produce the forms of knowledge specific to aesthetic engagement. Hailing from psychology, communications, and literary studies, these authors represent diverse methodologies and a range of cognitive specializations, including empirical reading studies, empathy, neurophenomenology, and mindfulness psychology. Through the application of psychology to literature and literary theory, they explore the capacity of the literary humanities to enhance thought and action, whether through scholarship, teaching, mental flexibility, or human well-being. Contributors. Marshall Alcorn, Paul B. Armstrong, Katalin B lint, Mark Bracher, Elizabeth Bradburn, M. Soledad Caballero, Nancy Easterlin, Richard J. Gerrig, Erin James, Aimee Knupsky, Anezka Kuzmičov , Micah L. Mumper, Michael O'Neill, Margrethe Bruun Vaage, Alexa Weik von Mossner

A Companion to Literary Theory

A Companion to Literary Theory
Author: David H. Richter
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 498
Release: 2018-02-16
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 111895873X

Introduces readers to the modes of literary and cultural study of the previous half century A Companion to Literary Theory is a collection of 36 original essays, all by noted scholars in their field, designed to introduce the modes and ideas of contemporary literary and cultural theory. Arranged by topic rather than chronology, in order to highlight the relationships between earlier and most recent theoretical developments, the book groups its chapters into seven convenient sections: I. Literary Form: Narrative and Poetry; II. The Task of Reading; III. Literary Locations and Cultural Studies; IV. The Politics of Literature; V. Identities; VI. Bodies and Their Minds; and VII. Scientific Inflections. Allotting proper space to all areas of theory most relevant today, this comprehensive volume features three dozen masterfully written chapters covering such subjects as: Anglo-American New Criticism; Chicago Formalism; Russian Formalism; Derrida and Deconstruction; Empathy/Affect Studies; Foucault and Poststructuralism; Marx and Marxist Literary Theory; Postcolonial Studies; Ethnic Studies; Gender Theory; Freudian Psychoanalytic Criticism; Cognitive Literary Theory; Evolutionary Literary Theory; Cybernetics and Posthumanism; and much more. Features 36 essays by noted scholars in the field Fills a growing need for companion books that can guide readers through the thicket of ideas, systems, and terminologies Presents important contemporary literary theory while examining those of the past The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Literary Theory will be welcomed by college and university students seeking an accessible and authoritative guide to the complex and often intimidating modes of literary and cultural study of the previous half century.

The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies

The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies
Author: Lisa Zunshine
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 681
Release: 2015
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0199978069

The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies applies developments in cognitive science to a wide range of literary texts that span multiple historical periods and numerous national literary traditions.

The Palgrave Handbook of Affect Studies and Textual Criticism

The Palgrave Handbook of Affect Studies and Textual Criticism
Author: Donald R. Wehrs
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 892
Release: 2017-12-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3319633031

This volume provides a comprehensive account of how scholarship on affect and scholarship on texts have come to inform one another over the past few decades. The result has been that explorations of how texts address, elicit, shape, and dramatize affect have become central to contemporary work in literary, film, and art criticism, as well as in critical theory, rhetoric, performance studies, and aesthetics. Guiding readers to the variety of topics, themes, interdisciplinary dialogues, and sub-disciplinary specialties that the study of interplay between affect and texts has either inaugurated or revitalized, the handbook showcases and engages the diversity of scholarly topics, approaches, and projects that thinking of affect in relation to texts and related media open up or enable. These include (but are not limited to) investigations of what attention to affect brings to established methods of studying texts—in terms of period, genre, cultural contexts, rhetoric, and individual authorship.

Edinburgh Companion to Critical Theory

Edinburgh Companion to Critical Theory
Author: Sim Stuart Sim
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 748
Release: 2016-02-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0748693416

Featuring an international team of specialists on the subject, The Edinburgh Companion to Critical Theory provides a comprehensive analysis of the changing role of critical theory in the new century. Taking note of the many new theoretical and socio-political developments in recent years, the volume conclusively demonstrates critical theory's continuing relevance across disciplines ranging from the arts and social sciences through to the hard sciences. Being theoretically informed is not an optional part of study any more, it is a necessary, central part, and The Companion will bring you up to date with what is happening across the spectrum of critical theory.The volume consists of eleven sections comprising twenty-eight chapters, each covering a particular branch of critical theory from Marxism through to present-day developments such as Cognitive Theory. Every chapter considers the historical development of the theory in question, explaining the main concepts and thinkers involved, before proceeding to assess where it stands in relation to current academic and socio-political concerns and debates. Outlining recent advances in each area, and the emergence of new voices, The Companion offers readers a welcome opportunity to reorient themselves within the history and role of critical theory in its many forms.

Cognitive Narrative Thematics

Cognitive Narrative Thematics
Author: Daniel Candel
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2023-12-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1003813240

Cognitive Narratives Thematics proposes a new way in which narrative works organise their thematic material. It rehabilitates the study of what books are about by providing a cognitive narrative thematic model (CNT). Part I presents CNT by combining different approaches to narrative, such as evolutionary theory, semiotics, possible worlds theory, or rhetorical criticism. Part II applies CNT to a variety of well-known narratives in different modalities, such as Robert Browning’s "My Last Duchess", Julia Donaldson’s The Gruffalo, Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, Frank Miller’s 300, or Mike Mignola’s Hellboy. It also considers literary histories and digital humanities. Daniel Candel shows that CNT deserves greater attention and that thematics generates its own forms and adds to the aesthetic pleasure of the text. Candel illustrates that CNT improves the established interpretations of the narrative works it studies. This innovative study reveals how CNT offers readers a deeper understanding, and how readers and critics are often using CNT intuitively without being aware of it. It is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of narrative theory.

Shakespeare and Consciousness

Shakespeare and Consciousness
Author: Paul Budra
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2016-05-11
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137595418

This book examines how early modern and recently emerging theories of consciousness and cognitive science help us to re-imagine our engagements with Shakespeare in text and performance. Papers investigate the connections between states of mind, emotion, and sensation that constitute consciousness and the conditions of reception in our past and present encounters with Shakespeare’s works. Acknowledging previous work on inwardness, self, self-consciousness, embodied self, emotions, character, and the mind-body problem, contributors consider consciousness from multiple new perspectives—as a phenomenological process, a materially determined product, a neurologically mediated reaction, or an internally synthesized identity—approaching Shakespeare’s plays and associated cultural practices in surprising and innovative ways.

The Gist of Reading

The Gist of Reading
Author: Andrew Elfenbein
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2018-01-16
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1503604101

What happens to books as they live in our long-term memory? Why do we find some books entertaining and others not? And how does literary influence work on writers in different ways? Grounded in the findings of empirical psychology, this book amends classic reader-response theory and attends to neglected aspects of reading that cannot be explained by traditional literary criticism. Reading arises from a combination of two kinds of mental work: automatic and controlled processes. Automatic processes, such as the ability to see visual symbols as words, are the result of constant practice; controlled processes, such as predicting what might occur next in a story, arise from readers' conscious use of skills and background knowledge. When we read, automatic and controlled processes work together to create the "gist" of reading, the constant interplay between these two kinds of processes. Andrew Elfenbein not only explains how we read today, but also uses current knowledge about reading to consider readers of past centuries, arguing that understanding gist is central to interpreting the social, psychological, and political impact of literary works. The result is the first major revisionary account of reading practices in literary criticism since the 1970s.

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Literature

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Literature
Author: Noël Carroll
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 521
Release: 2015-12-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317484363

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Literature is an in-depth examination of literature through a philosophical lens, written by distinguished figures across the major divisions of philosophy. Its 40 newly-commissioned essays are divided into six sections: historical foundations what is literature? aesthetics & appreciation meaning & interpretation metaphysics & epistemology ethics & political theory The Companion opens with a comprehensive historical overview of the philosophy of literature, including chapters on the study’s ancient origins up to the 18th-20th centuries. The second part defines literature and its different categories. The third part covers the aesthetics of literature. The fourth and fifth sections discuss the meaning and consequences of philosophical interpretation of literature, as well as epistemological and metaphysical issues such as literary cognitivism and imaginative resistance. The sixth section contextualizes the place of philosophy of literature in the "real world" with essays on topics such as morality, politics, race and gender. Fully indexed, with helpful further reading sections at the end of each chapter, this Companion is an ideal starting point for those coming to philosophy of literature for the first time as well as a valuable reference for readers more familiar with the subject.