Cognition, Literature, and History

Mark J. Bruhn is Professor of English at Regis University. His recent studies of literary cognition include two articles in a 2011 special double-issue of Poetics Today on "Exchange Values: Poetics and Cognitive Science," which he guest-edited, and a chapter in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies.　 Donald R. Wehrs is Hargis Professor of British Literature at Auburn University, editor of Levinas and Twentieth-Century Literature (Delaware, 2013), co-editor (with David P. Haney) of Levinas and Nineteenth-Century Literature (Delaware, 2009), and author of three monographs on 20th-century African fiction and over thirty essays on critical theory and comparative literature.

"Taken together, the twelve essays in Cognition, Literature and History make a strong case for an integration of an evolutionary view of the human mind and cognition and a historical consideration of the mind’s elaborate products such as literary texts." - Ana Margarida Abrantes, Journal of Literary Theory

• Introduction: Integrating the Study of Cognition, Literature, and History Mark J. Bruhn Part I: Kinds of (Literary) Cognition: Cognitive Genre Theory and History 1. Melodies of Mind: Poetic Forms as Cognitive Structures David Duff 2. Toward a Cognitive Sociology of Genres Michael Sinding 3. Novelty, Canonicity, and Competing Simulations in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Nancy Easterlin 4. Reassessing the Concept of Ideology Transfer: On Evolved Cognitive Tendencies in the Literary Reception Process Katja Mellmann Part II: The Moral of the Story: Affective Narratology 5. Conceptual Blending, Embodied Well-Being, and the Making of Twelfth-Century Secular Literature Donald R. Wehrs 6. Maternity, Morality, and Metaphor: Galdos’ Dona Perfecta, Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba, and Andalusian Culture Thomas Blake 7. National Identity, Narrative Universals, and Guilt: Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing Patrick Colm Hogan Part III: Perceiving Others and Narrating Selves: Theories of Mind and Literature 8. The Phenomenology of Person Perception Joel Krueger 9. The Mind of a Pícaro: Lázaro de Tormes Howard Mancing 10. Fiction as a Cognitive Challenge: Explorations into Alternative Forms of Selfhood and Experience Marina Grishakova Part IV: A Culture of Science and a Science of Culture: Theory and History of Cognitive (Literary) Studies 11. Romantic Reflections: Toward a Cultural History of Introspection in Mind Science Mark J. Bruhn 12. Toward a Science of Criticism: Aesthetic Values, Human Nature, and the Standard of Taste Mark Collier Epilogue: Literary Theory and Cognitive Studies Donald R. Wehrs