Theory of Mind is what enables us to put ourselves in another's shoes. It is mindreading, empathy, creative imagination of another's perspective: in short, it is simultaneously a highly sophisticated ability and a very basic necessity for human communication. Theory of Mind is central to such commercial endeavors as market research and product development, but it is also just as important in maintaining human relations over a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly, it is a critical tool in reading and understanding literature, which abounds with characters, situations, and other people's...

This book is the first cognitive literary analysis in the field of medieval French literature. As such, it focuses on the question of audience in the Old French epic poems known as "chansons de geste." Bringing to bear evidence from historical, literary, and manuscript sources, from the perspective of cognitive theory, Leverage demonstrates that there were multiple, complex audiences of the poems, and that common to each was a more personal, engaged, emotive relationship with the poems than has been recognized previously. Central to the audience's experience of the poems and to the aesthetic...