Mindful Aesthetics: Literature and the Science of Mind

Marc Notes: Originally published: 2014.; Includes bibliographical references and index.; 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. This title 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. Review Quotes: Do recent advances in neuroscience better help us understand culture? Few questions have been more divisive for contemporary criticism and theory in the humanities. This timely collection of essays by critics on both sides of the debate helps us get to grips with the issue. Indeed I suspect that, from within its pages, a resolution begins to appear. What resolution? Read the book and find out. Review Quotes: If one is determined to center one's literary attention on the mind in the text, this volume is for you. And while committed in the main to cognitivist forms of literary criticism and theory, "Mindful Aesthetics" ranges over arguments both for and against this particular mode of literature and science scholarship. It makes a solid scholarly contribution to the ongoing debates. Review Quotes: "Mindful Aesthetics" stages an informed and effective intervention into studies of literature, cognition, and evolutionary theory. In its energy, originality, and breadth of critical interests, this wide ranging collection speaks to the vitality and promise of the emerging field of cognitive literary and cultural criticism. Review Quotes: Featuring an exciting mix of established and emergent scholars in fields that include philosophy, literary theory, film studies, and the history of science, this wide-ranging collection raises key questions for research situated at the interface of aesthetics and the cognitive sciences. Indeed, even as it charts new directions for the study of literary (and other) art vis-a-vis human beings' mental dispositions and capacities, "Mindful Aesthetics" stands as a model for cross-disciplinary scholarship more generally."Biographical Note: Chris Danta is Senior Lecturer in English in the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales, Australia. He is the author of "Literature Suspends Death: Sacrifice and Storytelling in Kierkegaard, Kafka and Blanchot" (2011) and the coeditor of "Strong Opinions: J. M. Coetzee and the Authority of Contemporary Fiction "(2011). He has also published essays in" New Literary History," "Angelaki," "Textual Practice," "Modernism/modernity," "SubStance "and "Literature & Theology." Helen Groth is an Associate Professor and ARC Future Fellow in the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales, Australia. She is the author of "Victorian Photography and Literary Nostalgia" (2003), "Moving Images: Nineteenth-Century Reading and Screen Practices "(2013) and with Natalya Lusty, "Dreams and Modernity: A Cultural History" (2013). Table of Contents: Introduction: Between Minds"Chris Danta and Helen Groth"Section One: TheoriaChapter 1. Psychology and Literature: Mindful Close Reading"Brian Boyd"Chapter 2. Vitalism and Theoria "Claire Colebrook"Chapter 3. Continental Drift: The Clash Between Literary Theory and Cognitive Literary Studies "Paul Sheehan"Chapter 4. Thinking with the World: Coetzee's "Elizabeth Costello ""Anthony Uhlmann"""Section Two: Minds in HistoryChapter 5. 'The brain is a book which reads itself': Cultured Brains and Reductive Materialism from Diderot to J. J. C. Smart"Charles T. Wolfe"Chapter 6. Muted Literary Minds: James Sully, George Eliot and Psychologised Aesthetics in the Nineteenth Century "Penelope Hone"Chapter 7. The Mind as Palimpsest: Art, Dreaming and James Sully's Aesthetics of Latency"Helen Groth"Chapter 8. The Flame's Lover: The Modernist Mind of William Carlos Williams"Mark Steven"Section 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 Tribble"Chapter 10. Reproductive Aesthetics "Stephen Muecke"Chapter 11. Distended Moments in Neuronarrative: Character Consciousness and the Cognitive Sciences in Ian McEwan's "Saturday ""Hannah Courtney"Chapter 12. A Loose Democracy of the Skull: Characterology and Neuroscience"Julian Murphet"Afterword "Paul Giles"Index Contributor Bio:  Danta, Chris Chris Danta is Senior Lecturer in English in the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales, Australia. He is the author of "Literature Suspends Death: Sacrifice and Storytelling in Kierkegaard, Kafka and Blanchot" (2011) and the coeditor of "Strong Opinions: J. M. Coetzee and the Authority of Contemporary Fiction" (2011). He has also published essays in "New Literary History", "Angelaki", "Textual Practice", "Modernism/modernity", "SubStance "and "Literature & Theology". Contributor Bio:  Groth, Helen Helen Groth is an Associate Professor and ARC Future Fellow in the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales, Australia. She is the author of "Victorian Photography and Literary Nostalgia "(2003), "Moving Images: Nineteenth-Century Reading and Screen Practices "(2013) and with Natalya Lusty, "Dreams and Modernity: A Cultural History "(2013).