Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the NovelWhy We Read Fiction offers a lucid overview of the most exciting area of research in contemporary cognitive psychology known as "Theory of Mind" and discusses its implications for literary studies. It covers a broad range of fictional narratives, from Richardson's Clarissa, Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment, and Austen's Pride and Prejudice to Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Nabokov's Lolita, and Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. Zunshine's surprising new interpretations of well-known literary texts and popular cultural representations constantly prod her readers to rethink their own interest in fictional narrative. Written for a general audience, this study provides a jargon-free introduction to the rapidly growing interdisciplinary field known as cognitive approaches to literature and culture. |
Contents
Why Did Peter Walsh Tremble? | 3 |
What Is MindReading Also Known as Theory of Mind? | 6 |
Four Caveats | 10 |
Effortless MindReading | 13 |
Why Do We Read Fiction? | 16 |
The Novel as a Cognitive Experiment | 22 |
Can Cognitive Science Tell Us Why We Are Afraid of Mrs Dalloway? | 27 |
The Relationship between a Cognitive Analysis of Mrs Dalloway and the Larger Field of Literary Studies | 36 |
Monitoring Fictional States of Mind | 60 |
Fiction and History | 65 |
The Progress of the Elated Bridegroom | 82 |
The Deadly Demon Meets and Destroys | 100 |
What Does It Take to Suspect Everybody? | 121 |
Metarepresentationality and Some Recurrent Patterns of | 128 |
Always Historicize | 153 |
Authors Meet Their Readers | 159 |
Woolf Pinker and the Project of Interdisciplinarity | 40 |
Whose Thought Is It Anyway? | 47 |
Metarepresentational Ability and Schizophrenia | 54 |
Everyday Failures of SourceMonitoring | 58 |
Notes | 165 |
| 181 | |
| 193 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
argued argument autism aware behavior Beowulf characters Clarissa cognitive adaptations cognitive evolutionary cognitive literary Cognitive Science cognitive scientists complex consider Cosmides and Tooby crucial cultural Dalloway detective narrative detective novel detective story discussion emotional engage evolved cognitive example experience experimentation explain feelings Fictional Minds fictional narratives figure focused Ganimard genre going Hugh Humbert Ibid imagine implied author inferences interaction interpretation keep track Lady Bruton levels of intentionality literary critics literature Lolita Lovelace Lovelace’s Lupin married mental metarepresentational ability metarepresentational capacity metarepresentational framing metarepresentationality mind-reading Miss Partington murder Nabokov Narratology nymphet observes Palmer particular people’s person Phelan plot possible Pride and Prejudice protagonist readers reading fiction realize representation Richardson romance schizophrenia semantic memories sentation social source tag pointing source-monitoring Spolsky suspect tells Theory of Mind thought tion tional tive truth-value turn Unferth unreliable narrator wants whodunit Woolf writers Zuozhuan