Literary studies are at a tipping point. ." There is broad agreement that the discipline is in "crisis" - that it is aimless, that its intellectual energy is spent, that all of the trends are bad, and that fundamental change will be required to set things right. But there is little agreement on what those changes should be, and no one can predict which way things will ultimately tip. Literature, Science, and a New Humanities represents a bold new response to the crisis in academic literary studies. This book presents a total challenge to dominant paradigms of literary analysis and offers a...

Engaging Audiences asks what cognitive science can teachscholars of theatre studiesabout spectator response in the theatre. Bruce McConachieintroduces insights from neuroscience and evolutionary theory to examine the dynamics of conscious attention, empathy and memory in theatre goers."

Literary studies are at a tipping point. ." There is broad agreement that the discipline is in "crisis" - that it is aimless, that its intellectual energy is spent, that all of the trends are bad, and that fundamental change will be required to set things right. But there is little agreement on what those changes should be, and no one can predict which way things will ultimately tip. Literature, Science, and a New Humanities represents a bold new response to the crisis in academic literary studies. This book presents a total challenge to dominant paradigms of literary analysis and offers a...

In Performance, Cognitive Theory, and Devotional Culture, Jill Stevenson uses cognitive theory to explore the layperson s physical encounter with live religious performances, and to argue that laypeople s interactions with other devotional media - such as books and art objects - may also have functioned like performance events. By revealing the remarkable resonance between cognitive science and medieval visual theories, Stevenson demonstrates how understanding medieval culture can enrich the study of performance generally. She concludes by applying her theories of medieval performance culture...

Using Shakespeare's Hamlet as a test subject and cognitive linguistic theory of conceptual blending as a tool, Cook unravels the 'mirror held up to nature' at the center of Shakespeare's play and provides a methodology for applying cognitive science to the study of drama.

Where science has often been used to explore the questions raised by art, this book does the reverse, suggesting that art can address a problem raised by science: the deep challenge to ethics posed by Darwin's discovery that we are intentional beings living in an unintentional world. Using Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth, among others, Angus Fletcher shows how the physical experience of art can transform Darwin's discouraging theory into a practice-based ethics that establishes pluralism, curiosity, and cooperation as the basis of progressive life.

Early modern playing companies performed up to six different plays a week and mounted new plays frequently. This book seeks to answer a seemingly simple question: how did they do it? Drawing upon work in philosophy and the cognitive sciences, it proposes that the cognitive work of theatre is distributed across body, brain, and world.

Toward a General Theory of Acting explores the actor's art through the lens of Dynamic Systems Theory and recent findings in the Cognitive Sciences. An analysis of different theories of acting in the West from Stanislavski to Lecoq is followed by an in depth discussion of technique, improvisation, and creating a score. In the final chapter, the focus shifts to how these three are interwoven when the actor steps in front of an audience, whether performing realist, non-realist, or postdramatic theatre. Far from using the sciences to reduce acting to a formula, Lutterbie celebrates the mystery...

An epistemological inquiry into the dynamics of interpersonal trust-relations, combining philosophy, science, and critical theory in the analysis of performing bodies - on stage and in life. Rokotnitz argues for the exploration of drama as a conduit to emotional learning that can change the somatic identity of performers and audiences alike.

This book helps to bridge the gap between science and literary scholarship. Building on findings in the evolutionary human sciences, the authors construct a model of human nature in order to illuminate the evolved psychology that shapes the organization of characters in nineteenth-century British novels, from Jane Austen to E. M. Forster.