Mindful Aesthetics Literature and the Science of Mind

Do recent advances in neuroscience better help us understand culture? Few questions have been more divisive for contemporary criticism and theory in the humanities. This timely collection of essays by critics on both sides of the debate helps us get to grips with the issue. Indeed I suspect that, from within its pages, a resolution begins to appear. What resolution? Read the book and find out. -- Simon During, Professor, Centre for the History of European Discourses, The University of Queensland, Australia If one is determined to center one's literary attention on the mind in the text, this volume is for you. And while committed in the main to cognitivist forms of literary criticism and theory, Mindful Aesthetics ranges over arguments both for and against this particular mode of literature and science scholarship. It makes a solid scholarly contribution to the ongoing debates. -- Bruce Clarke, Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of Literature and Science, Texas Tech University, USA Featuring an exciting mix of established and emergent scholars in fields that include philosophy, literary theory, film studies, and the history of science, this wide-ranging collection raises key questions for research situated at the interface of aesthetics and the cognitive sciences. Indeed, even as it charts new directions for the study of literary (and other) art vis-a-vis human beings' mental dispositions and capacities, Mindful Aesthetics stands as a model for cross-disciplinary scholarship more generally. -- David Herman, Professor of Engaged Humanities, Department of English Studies, Durham University, UK Mindful Aesthetics stages an informed and effective intervention into studies of literature, cognition, and evolutionary theory. In its energy, originality, and breadth of critical interests, this wide ranging collection speaks to the vitality and promise of the emerging field of cognitive literary and cultural criticism. -- Alan Richardson, Professor of English at Boston College, USA and author of The Neural Sublime