"A Biocultural Approach to Literary Theory and Interpretation offers a fresh and reasoned approach to literary studies that at once preserves the central importance that interpretation plays in the humanities and embraces the exciting developments of the cognitive sciences.

Cognitive literary studies occupies a special position in debates over the purpose of higher education and the value of the humanities. Through its varied interdisciplinary commitments, cognitive literary studies offers ways to discover the processes, forms of knowledge, and ethical function of literary experience. Contributors to this issue argue that the humanities are not a trivial pursuit by theorizing and documenting the dynamic interactions of the individuals, groups, texts, and environments that cumulatively produce the forms of knowledge specific to aesthetic engagement. Hailing from psychology, communications, and literary studies, these authors represent diverse methodologies and a range of cognitive specializations, including empirical reading studies, empathy, neurophenomenology, and mindfulness psychology. Through the application of psychology to literature and literary theory, they explore the capacity of the literary humanities to enhance thought and action, whether through scholarship, teaching, mental flexibility, or human well-being. Contributors. Marshall Alcorn, Paul B. Armstrong, Katalin B lint, Mark Bracher, Elizabeth Bradburn, M. Soledad Caballero, Nancy Easterlin, Richard J. Gerrig, Erin James, Aimee Knupsky, Anezka Kuzmičov , Micah L. Mumper, Michael O'Neill, Margrethe Bruun Vaage, Alexa Weik von Mossner

Introduces readers to the modes of literary and cultural study of the previous half century A Companion to Literary Theory is a collection of 36 original essays, all by noted scholars in their field, designed to introduce the modes and ideas of contemporary literary and cultural theory. Arranged by topic rather than chronology, in order to highlight the relationships between earlier and most recent theoretical developments, the book groups its chapters into seven convenient sections: I. Literary Form: Narrative and Poetry; II. The Task of Reading; III. Literary Locations and Cultural Studies; IV. The Politics of Literature; V. Identities; VI. Bodies and Their Minds; and VII. Scientific Inflections. Allotting proper space to all areas of theory most relevant today, this comprehensive volume features three dozen masterfully written chapters covering such subjects as: Anglo-American New Criticism; Chicago Formalism; Russian Formalism; Derrida and Deconstruction; Empathy/Affect Studies; Foucault and Poststructuralism; Marx and Marxist Literary Theory; Postcolonial Studies; Ethnic Studies; Gender Theory; Freudian Psychoanalytic Criticism; Cognitive Literary Theory; Evolutionary Literary Theory; Cybernetics and Posthumanism; and much more. Features 36 essays by noted scholars in the field Fills a growing need for companion books that can guide readers through the thicket of ideas, systems, and terminologies Presents important contemporary literary theory while examining those of the past The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Literary Theory will be welcomed by college and university students seeking an accessible and authoritative guide to the complex and often intimidating modes of literary and cultural study of the previous half century.

The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies applies developments in cognitive science to a wide range of literary texts that span multiple historical periods and numerous national literary traditions.

This volume provides a comprehensive account of how scholarship on affect and scholarship on texts have come to inform one another over the past few decades. The result has been that explorations of how texts address, elicit, shape, and dramatize affect have become central to contemporary work in literary, film, and art criticism, as well as in critical theory, rhetoric, performance studies, and aesthetics. Guiding readers to the variety of topics, themes, interdisciplinary dialogues, and sub-disciplinary specialties that the study of interplay between affect and texts has either inaugurated or revitalized, the handbook showcases and engages the diversity of scholarly topics, approaches, and projects that thinking of affect in relation to texts and related media open up or enable. These include (but are not limited to) investigations of what attention to affect brings to established methods of studying texts—in terms of period, genre, cultural contexts, rhetoric, and individual authorship.

Featuring an international team of specialists on the subject, The Edinburgh Companion to Critical Theory provides a comprehensive analysis of the changing role of critical theory in the new century. Taking note of the many new theoretical and socio-political developments in recent years, the volume conclusively demonstrates critical theory's continuing relevance across disciplines ranging from the arts and social sciences through to the hard sciences. Being theoretically informed is not an optional part of study any more, it is a necessary, central part, and The Companion will bring you up to date with what is happening across the spectrum of critical theory.The volume consists of eleven sections comprising twenty-eight chapters, each covering a particular branch of critical theory from Marxism through to present-day developments such as Cognitive Theory. Every chapter considers the historical development of the theory in question, explaining the main concepts and thinkers involved, before proceeding to assess where it stands in relation to current academic and socio-political concerns and debates. Outlining recent advances in each area, and the emergence of new voices, The Companion offers readers a welcome opportunity to reorient themselves within the history and role of critical theory in its many forms.

What happens to books as they live in our long-term memory? Why do we find some books entertaining and others not? And how does literary influence work on writers in different ways? Grounded in the findings of empirical psychology, this book amends classic reader-response theory and attends to neglected aspects of reading that cannot be explained by traditional literary criticism. Reading arises from a combination of two kinds of mental work: automatic and controlled processes. Automatic processes, such as the ability to see visual symbols as words, are the result of constant practice; controlled processes, such as predicting what might occur next in a story, arise from readers' conscious use of skills and background knowledge. When we read, automatic and controlled processes work together to create the "gist" of reading, the constant interplay between these two kinds of processes. Andrew Elfenbein not only explains how we read today, but also uses current knowledge about reading to consider readers of past centuries, arguing that understanding gist is central to interpreting the social, psychological, and political impact of literary works. The result is the first major revisionary account of reading practices in literary criticism since the 1970s.