Stories and Minds: Cognitive Approaches to Literary Narrative

Frontiers of Narrative

by Lars Bernaerts (Editor), Dirk De Geest (Editor), Luc Herman (Editor)

How do narratives draw on our memory capacity? How is our attention guided when we are reading a literary narrative? What kind of empathy is triggered by intercultural novels? A cast of international scholars explores these and other questions from an interdisciplinary perspective in Stories and Minds , a collection of essays that discusses cutting-edge research in the field of cognitive narrative studies. Recent findings in the philosophy of mind and cognitive psychology, among other disciplines, are integrated in fresh theoretical perspectives and illustrated with accompanying analyses of literary fiction. Pursuing such topics as narrative gaps, mental simulation in reading, theory of mind, and folk psychology, these essays address fundamental questions about the role of cognitive processes in literary narratives and in narrative comprehension. Stories and Minds reveals the rich possibilities for research along the nexus of narrative and mind.

Genres: Philosophy

236 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last dregs in the bottle of literary psychoanalysis have been mouldy for sometime now, but the possibilities afforded by applying cognitive studies to literature seem to me novel and, for now, boundless.

Bernaerts' intro acknowledges the ravines within the landscape of cognitive approaches, as well as which arguments fall down those traps. For someone who knew nada about the topic, I've come away with the bibliography I need, and I'll be reading more from Marisa Bortulussi and Peter Dixon presently.

[Irene · Rating 3 out of 5]

As it is a collection of articles written by different people, it is hard to grade the book in an aggregate manner. Some articles were interesting, others were either too academic or technical to keep my interest.

I particularly recommend Elaine Auyoung's article in Chapter 3 (which overwhelmingly convinced me to purchase her subsequent book "When Fiction Feels Real" at a fairly expensive hardcover price, as it had first come out, but now has a much more affordable Kindle/paperback price. Her full-length book did not disappoint).