Download or read book Strange Concepts and the Stories They Make Possible written by Lisa Zunshine and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2008-07-28 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fresh and often playful interdisciplinary study, Lisa Zunshine presents a fluid discussion of how key concepts from cognitive science complicate our cultural interpretations of “strange” literary phenomena. From Short Circuit to I, Robot, from The Parent Trap to Big Business, fantastic tales of rebellious robots, animated artifacts, and twins mistaken for each other are a permanent fixture in popular culture and have been since antiquity. Why do these strange concepts captivate the human imagination so thoroughly? Zunshine explores how cognitive science, specifically its ideas of essentialism and functionalism, combined with historical and cultural analysis, can help us understand why we find such literary phenomena so fascinating. Drawing from research by such cognitive evolutionary anthropologists and psychologists as Scott Atran, Paul Bloom, Pascal Boyer, and Susan A. Gelman, Zunshine examines the cognitive origins of the distinction between essence and function and how unexpected tensions between these two concepts are brought into play in fictional narratives. Discussing motifs of confused identity and of twins in drama, science fiction’s use of robots, cyborgs, and androids, and nonsense poetry and surrealist art, she reveals the range and power of key concepts from science in literary interpretation and provides insight into how cognitive-evolutionary research on essentialism can be used to study fiction as well as everyday strange concepts.
Download or read book A Tale Told by a Machine written by Heather Duerre Humann and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2023-05-08 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intelligent machines have long existed in science fiction, and they now appear in mainstream films such as Bladerunner, Ex Machina, I Am Mother and Her, as well as in a recent proliferation of literary texts narrated from the machine's perspective. These new portrayals of artificial intelligence inevitably foreground dilemmas related to identity and selfhood, concepts being reassessed in the 21st century. Taking a close look at novels like Ancillary Justice, Aurora, All Systems Red, The Actuality, The Unseen World and Klara and the Sun, this work investigates key questions that arise from the use of AI narrators. It describes how these narratives challenge humanist principles by suggesting that selfhood is an illusion, even as they make the case for extending these principles to machines by proposing that they are not so different from humans. The book examines what is at stake with nonhuman narration, the qualities of AI narratives, and what it might mean to relate to a narrator when the voice adopted is that of an AI.
Download or read book Empathy and the Strangeness of Fiction written by Maria C. Scott and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-02 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how and why narrative fiction engages empathy, including Theory of MindOffers a broad overview of current scientific work on the effects of fiction-reading on empathy, including Theory of MindProvides an original intervention in the field of literary theory, centring on the reflexive properties of the fictional strangerIncludes stand-alone close readings of three novels by important French authorsThis book studies recent psychological findings which suggest that reading fiction cultivates empathy, encouraging us to be critically reflective, suspicious readers as well as participatory, 'nave' readers. Scott draws on literary theory and close readings to argue that engagement with fictional stories also teaches us to resist uncritical forms of empathy and reminds us of the limitations of our ability to understand other people. The book treats figures of the stranger in Balzac's La Fille aux yeux d'or, Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir and Sand's Indiana as emblematic of the strangeness of narrative fiction, both drawing us in and keeping us at a distance.
Download or read book Blending and the Study of Narrative written by Ralf Schneider and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theory of Blending, or Conceptual Integration, proposed by Gilles Fauconnier and Marc Turner, is one of most promising cognitive theories of meaning production. It has been successfully applied to the analysis of poetic discourse and micro-textual elements, such as metaphor. Prose narrative has so far received significantly less attention. The present volume aims to remedy this situation. Following an introductory discussion of the connections between narrative and the processes of blending, the contributions demonstrate the range of applications of the theory to the study of narrative. They cover issues such as time and space, literary character and perspective, genre, story levels, and fictional minds; some chapters show how such phenomena as metalepsis, counterfactual narration, intermediality, extended metaphors, and suspense can be fruitfully studied from the vantage point of Conceptual Integration. Working within a theoretical framework situated at the intersection of narratology and the cognitive sciences, the book provides both fresh readings for individual literary and film narratives and new impulses for post-classical narratology.
Download or read book Mutant Narratives in Ecological Science Fiction written by Kaisa Kortekallio and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-11-16 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using an innovative multidisciplinary approach which is deeply invested in posthumanist thought, this book demonstrates how reading science fiction shapes the way we engage with lived environments. In dialogue with works by widely studied science fiction authors Greg Bear, N.K. Jemisin, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Jeff VanderMeer, it draws out how they function as mutant narratives. The first to systematically integrate three fields – feminist posthumanism, cognitive narratology, and science fiction studies – it offers a complex and coherent understanding of readerly experience as material, embodied, dynamic, and imaginative. Covering a range of urgent topics, including climate fiction, New Weird fiction, and new phenomenologies of the body, this book is the first to demonstrate how readerly experience acts as a site for ethical and political reorientation in the time of climate change.
Download or read book Twins and Recursion in Digital Literary and Visual Cultures written by Edward King and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-04-07 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tale of twins being reunited after a long separation is a trope that has been endlessly repeated and reworked across different cultures and throughout history, with each moment adapting the twin plot to address its current cultural tensions. In this study, Edward King demonstrates how twins are a means of exploring the social implications of hyper-connectivity and the compromising relationship between humans and digital information, their environment and their genetics. As King demonstrates, twins tell us about the changing forms of connectivity and power in contemporary culture and what new conceptions of the human they present us with. Taking account of a broad range of literary, cultural and scientific practices, Entwined Being probes discussions surrounding twins such as: - The way in which they appear in behavioral genetics as a way of identifying inherited predispositions to social media - How their faces interrupt biometric interfaces such as facial recognition software and undermine advances in neo-liberal surveillance systems - How they represent the uncanny and the weird in the horror genre and how this questions ideologies of communications media and the connectivity it enables - Their association with telepathy and cybernetics in science fiction - Their construction as models for entangled being in ecological thought Drawing upon the literary and filmic works of Ken Follet, Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, Bruce Chatwin, Shelley Jackson, Brian de Palma, Peter Greenway and David Cronenberg, as well as science fiction literature and the television series Orphan Black, King illuminates how twins are employed across a range of disciplines to envision a critical re-conception of the human in times of digital integration and ecological crisis.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies written by Lisa Zunshine and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 681 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Embodiment and the Cosmic Perspective in Twentieth Century Fiction written by Marco Caracciolo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-13 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In dialogue with groundbreaking technologies and scientific models, twentieth century fiction presents readers with a vast mosaic of perspectives on the cosmos. The literary imagination of the world beyond the human scale, however, faces a fundamental difficulty: if, as researchers in both cognitive science and narrative theory argue, fiction is a practice geared toward the human embodied mind, how can it cope with scientific theories and concepts— the Big Bang, quantum physics, evolutionary biology, and so on—that resist our common-sense intuitions and appear discontinuous, in spatial as well as temporal terms, with our bodies? This book sets out to answer this question by showing how the embodiment of mind continues to matter even as writers— and readers—are pushed out of their terrestrial comfort zone. Offering thoughtful commentary on work by both mainstream literary authors and science fiction writers (from Primo Levi to Jeanette Winterson, from Olaf Stapledon to Pamela Zoline), Embodiment and the Cosmic Perspective in Twentieth-Century Fiction explores the multiple ways in which narrative can radically defamiliarize our bodily experience and bridge the gap with cosmic realities. This investigation affords an opportunity to reflect on the role of literature as it engages with science and charts its epistemological and ethical ramifications.
Download or read book Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies written by Lisa Zunshine and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2010-07-15 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on the explosion of academic and public interest in cognitive science in the past two decades, this volume features articles that combine literary and cultural analysis with insights from neuroscience, cognitive evolutionary psychology and anthropology, and cognitive linguistics. Lisa Zunshine’s introduction provides a broad overview of the field. The essays that follow are organized into four parts that explore developments in literary universals, cognitive historicism, cognitive narratology, and cognitive approaches in dialogue with other theoretical approaches, such as postcolonial studies, ecocriticism, aesthetics, and poststructuralism. Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies provides readers with grounding in several major areas of cognitive science, applies insights from cognitive science to cultural representations, and recognizes the cognitive approach’s commitment to seeking common ground with existing literary-theoretical paradigms. This book is ideal for graduate courses and seminars devoted to cognitive approaches to cultural studies and literary criticism. Contributors: Mary Thomas Crane, Nancy Easterlin, David Herman, Patrick Colm Hogan, Bruce McConachie, Alan Palmer, Alan Richardson, Ellen Spolsky, G. Gabrielle Starr, Blakey Vermeule, Lisa Zunshine
Download or read book The Writer Laid Bare written by Lee Kofman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-03-30 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Writer Laid Bare is a book for everyone who loves the craft of good writing. Be they a voracious reader wanting to know more or an emerging writer themselves, best-selling author and writing coach Lee Kofman has distilled her wisdom, insight and passion into this guide to writing and emotional honesty. A combination of raw memoir and a professional writing toolkit, Lee examines her own life, rich in story and emotion to reveal how committing to a truthful writing practice helped her conquer writer’s block and develop her own authentic voice. ‘Show don’t tell’ has never been so compelling. Inspired by her popular writing courses, Lee also offers practical advice on drafts, edits and how to achieve a life/writing balance. How combining her writing with motherhood led her to recognise that ‘ the pram in the hall’ issue is real. Plus the ultimate reading list of books you really should read, from Chekhov to Elena Ferrante and Helen Garner. ‘The Writer Laid Bare takes us on an intimate journey into the magical, and often challenging, terrain an author inhabits. Kofman courageously shares with the reader her own probing writerly journey of self-discovery.’ - Leah Kaminsky
Download or read book Evolution and Popular Narrative written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-06-07 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evolution and Popular Narrative argues that an evolutionary approach to popular narrative provides an incisive index into human nature. The contributors explore various media and genres to gauge the interdependency of human nature and culture in our aesthetic appreciation.
Download or read book The Secret Life of Literature written by Lisa Zunshine and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative account that brings together cognitive science, ethnography, and literary history to examine patterns of “mindreading” in a wide range of literary works. For over four thousand years, writers have been experimenting with what cognitive scientists call “mindreading”: constantly devising new social contexts for making their audiences imagine complex mental states of characters and narrators. In The Secret Life of Literature, Lisa Zunshine uncovers these mindreading patterns, which have, until now, remained invisible to both readers and critics, in works ranging from The Epic of Gilgamesh to Invisible Man. Bringing together cognitive science, ethnography, and literary studies, this engaging book transforms our understanding of literary history. Central to Zunshine’s argument is the exploration of mental states “embedded” within each other, as, for instance, when Ellison’s Invisible Man is aware of how his white Communist Party comrades pretend not to understand what he means, when they want to reassert their position of power. Paying special attention to how race, class, and gender inform literary embedments, Zunshine contrasts this dynamic with real-life patterns studied by cognitive and social psychologists. She also considers community-specific mindreading values and looks at the rise and migration of embedment patterns across genres and national literary traditions, noting particularly the use of deception, eavesdropping, and shame as plot devices. Finally, she investigates mindreading in children’s literature. Stories for children geared toward different stages of development, she shows, provide cultural scaffolding for initiating young readers into a long-term engagement with the secret life of literature.
Download or read book Late Shakespeare 1608 1613 written by Andrew J. Power and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Late Shakespeare, 1608-1613, leading international Shakespeare scholars provide a contextually informed approach to Shakespeare's last seven plays.
Download or read book Theory of Mind and Literature written by Paula Leverage and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1: Theory of Mind Now and Then: Evolutionary and Historical Perspectives -- Theory of Mind and Theory of Minds in Literature Keith Oatley -- Social Minds in Little Dorrit Alan Palmer -- The Way We Imagine Mark Turner -- Theory of Mind and Fictions of Embodied Transparency Lisa Zunshine -- 2: Mind Reading and Literary Characterization -- Theory of the Murderous Mind: Understanding the Emotional Intensity of John Doyle's Interpretation of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd Diana Calderazzo -- Distraction as Liveliness of Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Characterization in Jane Austen Natalie Phillips -- Sancho Panza's Theory of Mind Howard Mancing -- Is Perceval Autistic?: Theory of Mind in the Conte del Graal Paula Leverage -- 3: Theory of Mind and Literary / Linguistic Structure -- Whose Mind's Eye? Free Indirect Discourse and the Covert Narrator in Marlene Streeruwitz's Nachwelt Jennifer Marston William -- Attractors, Trajectors, and Agents in Racine's "Récit de Théramène" Allen G. Wood -- The Importance of Deixis and Attributive Style for the Study of Theory of Mind: The Example of William Faulkner's Disturbed Characters Ineke Bockting -- 4: Alternate States of Mind -- Alternative Theory of Mind for Arti.cial Brains: A Logical Approach to Interpreting Alien Minds Orley K. Marron -- Reading Phantom Minds: Marie Darrieussecq's Naissance des fantômes and Ghosts' Body Language Mikko Keskinen -- Theory of Mind and Metamorphoses in Dreams: Jekyll & Hyde, and The Metamorphosis Richard Schweickert and Zhuangzhuang Xi -- Mother/Daughter Mind Reading and Ghostly Intervention in Toni Morrison's Beloved Klarina Priborkin -- 5: Theoretical, Philosophical, Political Approaches.
Download or read book How Literature Plays with the Brain written by Paul B. Armstrong and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2013-09-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the neuroscientific community, the study suggests that different areas of research—the neurobiology of vision and reading, the brain-body interactions underlying emotions—may be connected to a variety of aesthetic and literary phenomena. For critics and students of literature, the study engages fundamental questions within the humanities: What is aesthetic experience? What happens when we read a literary work? How does the interpretation of literature relate to other ways of knowing?
Download or read book Reading in History written by Bonnie Gunzenhauser and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays that offer a methodological framework for the history of reading. Focusing on a specific historical moment, it gathers statistics about such issues as literacy rates, library subscriptions, publication and sales figures, and print runs to answer questions about what was being read and by whom in a particular place and time.
Download or read book Reproduction by Design written by Angus McLaren and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modernity in interwar Europe frequently took the form of a preoccupation with mechanizing the natural; fears and fantasies revolved around the notion that the boundaries between people and machines were collapsing. Reproduction in particular became a battleground for those debating the merits of the modern world. That debate continues today, and to understand the history of our anxieties about modernity, we can have no better guide than Angus McLaren. In Reproduction by Design, McLaren draws on novels, plays, science fiction, and films of the 1920s and '30s, as well as the work of biologists, psychiatrists, and sexologists, to reveal surprisingly early debates on many of the same questions that shape the conversation today: homosexuality, recreational sex, contraception, abortion, euthanasia, sex change operations, and in vitro fertilization. Here, McLaren brings together the experience and perception of modernity with sexuality, technology, and ecological concerns into a cogent discussion of science’s place in reproduction in British and American cultural history.
