Thinking with Literature

To speak of 'thinking with literature' is to make the assumption that literature (in the broadest sense) is neither a side-show nor a side-issue in human cultures: it belongs to the spectrum of imaginative modes that includes both philosophical and scientific thought. Whether one regards it as a practice or as an archive literature is highly pervasive robust enduring and pregnant with values. <em>Thinking with Literature</em> argues that what it affords above all is a way of thinking whether for writer reader or critic. Literature constitutes one of the prime instruments of cultural improvisation; it is the embodiment of a powerful inventive and ever-changing cognitive agency. As such it invites a cognitive mode of criticism one which asserts the priority of the individual literary work as a unique product of human cognition. In this book discussions of topics arguments and hypotheses from the cognitive sciences philosophy and the theory of communication are woven into the fabric of a critical analysis which insists on the value of close reading: a poem by Yeats a scene from Shakespeare novels by Mme de Lafayette Conrad Frantzen stories from Winnie-the-Pooh and many others appear here on their own terms with their own cognitive energies. Written in an accessible style <em>Thinking with Literature</em> speaks both to mainstream readers of literature and to specialists in cognitive studies.<br>