Research Catalog

Adapted brains and imaginary worlds : cognitive science and the literature of the Renaissance

Title
Adapted brains and imaginary worlds : cognitive science and the literature of the Renaissance / Donald Beecher.
Author
Beecher, Donald
Publication
Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2016]

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TextUse in library JFE 16-3789Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315

Details

Description
viii, 484 pages; 23 cm
Summary
"The literary discipline is based on principles of structure and language, is concerned with interpreting the emotions in characters comprising humanity in all its variety reacting to the provocations of their imaginary worlds, and encompasses our cognitive and affective reactions to those representations. So much of what we take from reading, though, is not linked to language: linguistic prompts merely set in motion the associations, memories, and images through which we generate meaning and emotionalize experience. Reading, if it is to understand how and why our minds complete fictive worlds, must take an interest in what the emotions are, where they originate, and what they are for. The cognitive sciences offer valuable perspectives on the feeling brain, perspectives which reveal much about the emotions of imaginary persons and the feelings they arouse in readers. This work aims to connect textual interpretation and brain science. In so doing, it furthers the understanding of literary experience and opens up new approaches to literature in general through philosophical insights into the human brain. Each of the book's eleven chapters sets out to bring a relevant cognitive perspective into the spotlight: memory, the emotions, the self, intentionality, laughter, crying, conversion experience, the psychology of suspense, criminal deviancy, binary ethics--the narrative brain in perceptual and imaginative modes--by analyzing these experiences and emotions in relevant works of Renaissance literature. The texts are both minor but characteristic and canonical, from The Dialogue of Solomon and Marcolphus and The Moral Philosophy of Doni, to Spenser's Faerie Queene and Shakespeare's Measure for Measure."--
Subjects
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references and index.
Additional Formats (note)
  • Issued also in electronic format.
Call Number
JFE 16-3789
ISBN
  • 9780773546806
  • 0773546804
  • 9780773546813
  • 0773546812
OCLC
923568423
Author
Beecher, Donald, author.
Title
Adapted brains and imaginary worlds : cognitive science and the literature of the Renaissance / Donald Beecher.
Publisher
Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2016]
Type of Content
text
Type of Medium
unmediated
Type of Carrier
volume
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Additional Formats
Issued also in electronic format.
Other Form:
Beecher, Donald, author. Adapted brains and imaginary worlds. (CaOONL)20159067596
Research Call Number
JFE 16-3789
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