Terence Cave CBE FBA is Emeritus Professor of French Literature, University of Oxford, Emeritus Research Fellow of St John's College, Oxford, and Honorary Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He holds an honorary doctorate at Royal Holloway University of London. and is Chevalier dans l'Ordre National du Mérite (France). He is recognized as a leading specialist in French Renaissance literature, but has also made landmark contributions to comparative literature and the history of poetics. In 2009, he won the Balzan Prize for literature since 1500 and subsequently directed the Balzan project 'Literature as an Object of Knowledge' (2010-14). His most recent work focuses on cognitive approaches to literature.Deirdre Wilson is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at UCL and co-director of the Linguistic Agency project at the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature, University of Oslo. Her book Relevance: Communication and Cognition, co-written with Dan Sperber, was described in the London Review of Books as 'nothing less than the makings of a radically new theory of communication, the first since Aristotle's' and in Rhetoric Society Quarterly as 'probably the best book you'll ever read on communication.' Translated into twelve languages (including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Malay, Indonesian, and Arabic), it has had a lasting influence in philosophy, psychology, and linguistics and is now regarded as a classic.

...the important contribution this volume makes to the understanding of relevance theory and its relation to literary interpretation. It shows explicitly what relevance theory shares with other cognitive approaches and how it differs. In respecting the power of literary language as ostensive performance, it invites rather than imposes interpretative strategies that inform the best of literary criticism.

• Terence Cave and Deirdre Wilson: Introduction 1: Elleke Boehmer: The Mind in Motion: A Cognitive Reading of W.B. Yeats's 'Long-legged Fly' 2: Raphael Lyne: Relevance Across History 3: Guillemette Bolens: Relevance Theory and Kinesic Analysis in Don Quixote and Madame Bovary 4: Neil Kenny: Relevance Theory and the Effect of Literature on Beliefs: The Example of Injun Joe in Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer 5: Kirsti Sellevold: On the Borders of the Ostensive: Blushing in Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth 6: Wes Williams: Invisible guests': Shared Contexts, Inference, and Poetic Truth in Heaney's 'Album V' 7: Kathryn Banks: Look again', 'Listen, listen', 'Keep looking': Emergent Properties and Sensorimotor Imagining in Mary Oliver's Poetry 8: Timothy Chesters: The Lingering of the Literal in Some Poems of Emily Dickinson 9: Terence Cave: Towards a Passing Theory of Literary Understanding 10: Deirdre Wilson: Relevance Theory and Literary Interpretation Bibliography of Works Cited

Terence Cave CBE FBA is Emeritus Professor of French Literature, University of Oxford, Emeritus Research Fellow of St John's College, Oxford, and Honorary Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He holds an honorary doctorate at Royal Holloway University of London. and is Chevalier dans l'Ordre National du Mérite (France). He is recognized as a leading specialist in French Renaissance literature, but has also made landmark contributions to comparative literature and the history of poetics. In 2009, he won the Balzan Prize for literature since 1500 and subsequently directed the Balzan project 'Literature as an Object of Knowledge' (2010-14). His most recent work focuses on cognitive approaches to literature.Deirdre Wilson is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at UCL and co-director of the Linguistic Agency project at the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature, University of Oslo. Her book Relevance: Communication and Cognition, co-written with Dan Sperber, was described in the London Review of Books as 'nothing less than the makings of a radically new theory of communication, the first since Aristotle's' and in Rhetoric Society Quarterly as 'probably the best book you'll ever read on communication.' Translated into twelve languages (including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Malay, Indonesian, and Arabic), it has had a lasting influence in philosophy, psychology, and linguistics and is now regarded as a classic.

...the important contribution this volume makes to the understanding of relevance theory and its relation to literary interpretation. It shows explicitly what relevance theory shares with other cognitive approaches and how it differs. In respecting the power of literary language as ostensive performance, it invites rather than imposes interpretative strategies that inform the best of literary criticism.

• Terence Cave and Deirdre Wilson: Introduction 1: Elleke Boehmer: The Mind in Motion: A Cognitive Reading of W.B. Yeats's 'Long-legged Fly' 2: Raphael Lyne: Relevance Across History 3: Guillemette Bolens: Relevance Theory and Kinesic Analysis in Don Quixote and Madame Bovary 4: Neil Kenny: Relevance Theory and the Effect of Literature on Beliefs: The Example of Injun Joe in Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer 5: Kirsti Sellevold: On the Borders of the Ostensive: Blushing in Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth 6: Wes Williams: Invisible guests': Shared Contexts, Inference, and Poetic Truth in Heaney's 'Album V' 7: Kathryn Banks: Look again', 'Listen, listen', 'Keep looking': Emergent Properties and Sensorimotor Imagining in Mary Oliver's Poetry 8: Timothy Chesters: The Lingering of the Literal in Some Poems of Emily Dickinson 9: Terence Cave: Towards a Passing Theory of Literary Understanding 10: Deirdre Wilson: Relevance Theory and Literary Interpretation Bibliography of Works Cited