Beckett and the Cognitive Method

Does literature merely represent cognitive processes or can it enhance parallel or reassess the scientific study of the mind? <em>Beckett and the Cognitive Method </em>argues that Samuel Beckett's narrative work rather than just expressing or rendering mental states inaugurates an exploratory use<br>of narrative as an introspective modeling technology. Through a detailed analysis of Beckett's entire corpus and published volumes of letters this book argues that Beckett pioneered a new method of writing to construct (in a mode analogous to scientific inquiry) models for the exploration of core<br>laws processes and dynamics in the human mind. <p/>Marco Bernini integrates frameworks from contemporary narrative theory cognitive sciences phenomenology and philosophy of mind to make a case for Beckett's modeling practice. Bernini demonstrates how this modeling applies to a vast array of processes including the (narrative) illusion of a sense<br>of self the dialogic interaction with memories and felt presences the synesthetic nature of inner experience and mental imagery the role of moods and emotions as cognitive drives and the emergent quality of consciousness. <em>Beckett and the Cognitive Method </em>also reflects on how Beckett's fictional<br>cognitive models are transformed into reading auditory or spectatorial experiences generating through narrative devices insights on what the sciences can only discursively report. As such Bernini argues that literature should be considered a proper exploration of the mind with its own tools and<br>models for cognitive inquiry.<br>