Synopses & Reviews
Stories people admire follow a limited number of patterns determined by ideas about emotion.
Review
"This marvelous book reconnects the study of literature to the themes that have made it eternally fascinating, and connects it for the first time to the sciences of mind and brain. It is a landmark in modern intellectual life, heralding an exciting new integration of the sciences and humanities." Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Pscychology, Harvard University, and author of The Blank Slate, How the Mind Works, and The Language Instinct."With painstaking scholarship and subtle theorizing, Patrick Colm Hogan marshals a compelling case for the trans-cultural reach of narrative forms. He shows in rich detail how plot structures recurring across world literature express emotional universals. The Mind and Its Stories is stimulating on several levels. It contributes a nuanced conception of universals to the philosophical debate. It offers cognitive scientists a remarkable occasion for rethinking the relation of emotion to culture and to human nature. And by providng enormously wide-ranging evidence for narrative universals, Hogan may touch off nothing short of a revolution in literary studies." David Bordwell, Jacques Ledoux Professor of Film Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison"The Mind and its Stories is in the forefront of the scientific study of literatre as a product of the capacities of the human mind. Patrick Colm Hogan shows how human cognitive processes of story lie at the center of both cognitive science and the study of verbal art." Mark Turner, Distinguished University Professor, The University of Maryland and Associate Director, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
Table of Contents
Introduction: studying narrative, studying emotion; 1. Literary universals; 2. Emotion and suggestion: lexical processes in literary experience; 3. Four hypotheses on emotion and narrative; 4. Writing beyond the ending: a problem of narrative, empathy, and ethics; 5. Extending the theory: emotion prototypes, narrative junctures, and lyric poetry; 6. Testing, revision, and the program of research in narrative universals: Ainu epic and the plot of sacrifice; 7. The structure of stories: some general principles of plot; Afterword: from the emotional nature of narrative to the narrative nature of emotion; Notes.