Neurocognitive Interpretations of Australian Literature

Jean-François Vernay is the author of five scholarly books, most of which are available in translation or are currently being translated: Water from the Moon: Illusion and Reality in the Works of Australian Novelist Christopher Koch (2007), A Brief Take on the Australian Novel (2016), The Seduction of Fiction: A Plea for Putting Emotions Back into Literary Interpretation (2016), and: La séduction de la fiction (2019). He has also edited several special issues of international academic journals and his 30 odd peer-reviewed articles and chapters have appeared in many countries around the world. His latest monograph, The Rise of the Australian Neurohumanities: Conversations Between Neurocognitive Research and Australian Literature, is an edited volume also available in the Routledge Focus series.

"Jean-François Vernay makes the case in this book for a turn to cognitive Australian literary studies, both in Australian novels themselves and in the emergence of a "synergistic field of cognitive-inspired Australian literary scholarship". These are new, provocative ideas which offer unexpected ways of reading a wide range of Australian fiction from Markus Zusak to Frank Moorhouse, from Claire Coleman to Christos Tsiolkas, from Linda Jaivin to Helen Demidenko. The analyses are fully alert to the scopic and haptic pleasures books can provide, the effects of the "neurodiversity paradigm", the cognitive mechanisms generated by erotic themes, the interaction between mind and body in Indigenous fiction, the representation of rage in the works of "angry gay" writers, and the major public controversy caused by Demidenko’s novel."David Carter, Emeritus Professor, FAHA, The University of Queensland, Australia."The understanding of what we humans get up to with each other, as members of our species and our cultures, has been the principal aspiration of both cognitive psychology and literary studies. Until very recently, however, these two disciplines have stayed rather far apart. In this timely monograph, Jean-François Vernay describes how they are at last approaching each other in mutually beneficial ways. This book shows how fiction and imagination are together coming into the centre of the neurocognitive enterprise."Keith Oatley, Author of Our Minds, Our Selves: A Brief History of Psychology.

• Foreword by Tony Hughes-d’AethINTRODUCTION: GOING THE EXTRA SCHOLARLY MILEPART I: COGNITION AND LITERARY CULTURE1 Up for a Cha(lle)nge? A Case for Cognitive Australian Literary Studies2 Do Judge a Book by Its Cover! Attraction and Attachment in Markus Zusak’s The Book ThiefPART II: COGNITION AND THE MIND3 Gazing Inward and Outward: (Trans)Formation in C.J.Koch’s Bildungsroman Protagonist and Readers 4 Australian High-Functioning ASD Fiction in the Age of Neurodiversity: Graeme Simsion’s Rosie Trilogy PART III: COGNITION AND THE BODY5 The Erotics of Writing and Reading Australian Novels: Linda Jaivin, Frank Moorhouse and John Purcell’s Art of Dealing with Dirt6 Brains in Pain and Coping Bodies: Trauma, Scars, Wounds, and the Mind-Body Relationship in Western Australia Aboriginal LiteraturePART IV: COGNITION AND EMOTIONS7 Angry Gay Men: Rage, Race and Reward in Contemporary Australian Advocacy Fiction8 No Time for Outrage? The Demidenko Affair: Literary Representations, Criticism and Moral Emotions in The Hand That Signed the Paper