Paleopoetics - Christopher Collins

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Résumé :
Christopher Collins introduces an exciting new field of research that traverses evolutionary biology, anthropology, archaeology, cognitive psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and literary study. Palaeopoetics maps the selective processes that shaped the human genus millions of years ago and prepared the human brain to play, imagine, empathize, and engage in fictive thought as mediated by language. A manifestation of the ?cognitive turn? in the humanities, this study calls for a broader, more integrated interpretation of the reading experience, one that restores our connection to the ancient methods of thought production still resonating within us. Speaking with authority on the scientific aspects of cognitive poetics, Collins proposes reading literature using cognitive skills that predate language and writing. These include the brain?s capacity to perceive the visible world, store its images, and retrieve them later to form simulated mental events. Long before humans could share stories through speech, they perceived, remembered, and imagined their own inner narratives.

Biographie:
Christopher Collins is professor emeritus of English at New York University. He earned his master?s at the University of California, Berkeley, and his Ph.D. in comparative literature at Columbia University. He is the author of several books, including Homeland Mythology: Biblical Narratives in American Culture; Reading the Written Image: Verbal Play, Interpretation, and the Roots of Iconophobia; and The Poetics of the Mind?s Eye: Literature and the Psychology of Imagination.

Sommaire:
PrefaceSome Notes on Dating and NomenclatureAcknowledgments1. The Idea of a Paleopoetics2. From Dualities to Dyads3. Play and Instrumentality4. The World as We See It5. Human Communication: From Pre-Language to Protolanguage6. Language: Its Prelinguistic Inheritance7. The Poetics of the Verbal ArtifactEpilogue: The Neopoetics of WritingNotesBibliographyIndex