GETR 7700 - Cognitive Approaches to Literary Study  - Lorna Martens

Theories of the way the mind works have always exercised a strong attraction on humanistic disciplines, including the study of literature--witness the grip of Freud, also Jung, then Lacan over the theories and practices of literary study in the twentieth century.   Today, cognitive science and neurobiology appear to offer more scientifically grounded insights about the human brain.  Many of these appear highly relevant to literary production and reception.   Since the 1980s, but more particularly in the last twenty years, literary scholars have adapted various aspects of psychological, linguistic, and neuroscientific work to literary study.  And the affair goes both ways.  Just as Freud and his progeny drew on literary models and interpreted literary texts, so have present-day cognitive scientists used literature as a resource and retheorized subjects like “metaphor” and “narrative,” in addition to performing empirical studies of reader response.  This course will focus on most or all of the following areas and their application to literary study:  conceptual metaphor, the question of self, blending, emotion, empirical studies of reader response, memory theory, and Theory of Mind.  We will read works by scientists that have found the greatest resonance in literary circles—works by Lakoff and Johnson, Damasio, and Fauconnier and Turner—in addition to work by literary scholars, such as Fludernik, Keen, Miall, and Zunshine.   Last but not least, we will consider whether the advances in cognitive science and neuroscience have given literary study something new and better, and if so, what?

By way of clarification:  the field is emergent.  Terminology is in flux.  The word “cognitive” has recently been used to include 1. emotions (initially excluded from “cognitive science” ) and  2.  the non-human,  including the digital world.  This course confines itself to the human.  Thus, emotions are included.  Digital applications, cell phones, etc., are excluded.  This is not a course in digital humanities, nor will it deal with artificial intelligence, “nonconscious cognitive systems,” or the like. 

 Open to Arts and Sciences graduate students in their second year and beyond.