How Authors' Minds Make Stories

How Authors' Minds Make Stories PDF Author: Patrick Colm Hogan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110703440X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
This book explores how the creations of great authors result from the same operations as our everyday counterfactual and hypothetical imaginations, which cognitive scientists refer to as "simulations." Drawing on detailed literary analyses as well as recent research in neuroscience and related fields, Patrick Colm Hogan develops a rigorous theory of the principles governing simulation that goes beyond any existing framework. He examines the functions and mechanisms of narrative imagination, with particular attention to the role of theory of mind, and relates this analysis to narrative universals. In the course of this theoretical discussion, Hogan explores works by Austen, Faulkner, Shakespeare, Racine, Brecht, Kafka, and Calvino. He pays particular attention to the principles and parameters defining an author's narrative idiolect, examining the cognitive and emotional continuities that span an individual author's body of work.

How Authors' Minds Make Stories

How Authors' Minds Make Stories PDF Author: Patrick Colm Hogan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110703440X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 251

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explores how the creations of great authors result from the same operations as our everyday counterfactual and hypothetical imaginations, which cognitive scientists refer to as "simulations." Drawing on detailed literary analyses as well as recent research in neuroscience and related fields, Patrick Colm Hogan develops a rigorous theory of the principles governing simulation that goes beyond any existing framework. He examines the functions and mechanisms of narrative imagination, with particular attention to the role of theory of mind, and relates this analysis to narrative universals. In the course of this theoretical discussion, Hogan explores works by Austen, Faulkner, Shakespeare, Racine, Brecht, Kafka, and Calvino. He pays particular attention to the principles and parameters defining an author's narrative idiolect, examining the cognitive and emotional continuities that span an individual author's body of work.

Minds Made for Stories

Minds Made for Stories PDF Author: Thomas Newkirk
Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
ISBN: 9780325046952
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In this highly readable and provocative book, Thomas Newkirk explodes the long standing habit of opposing abstract argument with telling stories. Newkirk convincingly shows that effective argument is already a kind of narrative and is deeply "entwined with narrative." --Gerald Graff, former MLA President and author of Clueless in Academe Narrative is regularly considered a type of writing-often an "easy" one, appropriate for early grades but giving way to argument and analysis in later grades. This groundbreaking book challenges all that. It invites readers to imagine narrative as something more-as the primary way we understand our world and ourselves. "To deny the centrality of narrative is to deny our own nature," Newkirk explains. "We seek companionship of a narrator who maintains our attention, and perhaps affection. We are not made for objectivity and pure abstraction-for timelessness. We have 'literary minds" that respond to plot, character, and details in all kind of writing. As humans, we must tell stories." When we are engaged readers, we are following a story constructed by the author, regardless of the type of writing. To sustain a reading-in a novel, an opinion essay, or a research article- we need a "plot" that helps us comprehend specific information, or experience the significance of an argument. As Robert Frost reminds us, all good memorable writing is "dramatic." Minds Made for Stories is a needed corrective to the narrow and compartmentalized approaches often imposed on schools-approaches which are at odds with the way writing really works outside school walls.

The Mind and its Stories

The Mind and its Stories PDF Author: Patrick Colm Hogan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139440705
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
There are profound, extensive, and surprising universals in literature, which are bound up with universals in emotion. Hogan maintains that debates over the cultural specificity of emotion are misdirected because they have ignored a vast body of data that bear directly on the way different cultures imagine and experience emotion - literature. This is the first empirically and cognitively based discussion of narrative universals. Professor Hogan argues that, to a remarkable degree, the stories people admire in different cultures follow a limited number of patterns and that these patterns are determined by cross-culturally constant ideas about emotion. In formulating his argument, Professor Hogan draws on his extensive reading in world literature, experimental research treating emotion and emotion concepts, and methodological principles from the contemporary linguistics and the philosophy of science. He concludes with a discussion of the relations among narrative, emotion concepts, and the biological and social components of emotion.

The Science of Storytelling

The Science of Storytelling PDF Author: Will Storr
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 168335818X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
The compelling, groundbreaking guide to creative writing that reveals how the brain responds to storytelling Stories shape who we are. They drive us to act out our dreams and ambitions and mold our beliefs. Storytelling is an essential part of what makes us human. So, how do master storytellers compel us? In The Science of Storytelling, award-winning writer and acclaimed teacher of creative writing Will Storr applies dazzling psychological research and cutting-edge neuroscience to our myths and archetypes to show how we can write better stories, revealing, among other things, how storytellers—and also our brains—create worlds by being attuned to moments of unexpected change. Will Storr’s superbly chosen examples range from Harry Potter to Jane Austen to Alice Walker, Greek drama to Russian novels to Native American folk tales, King Lear to Breaking Bad to children’s stories. With sections such as “The Dramatic Question,” “Creating a World,” and “Plot, Endings, and Meaning,” as well as a practical, step-by-step appendix dedicated to “The Sacred Flaw Approach,” The Science of Storytelling reveals just what makes stories work, placing it alongside such creative writing classics as John Yorke’s Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey into Story and Lajos Egri’s The Art of Dramatic Writing. Enlightening and empowering, The Science of Storytelling is destined to become an invaluable resource for writers of all stripes, whether novelist, screenwriter, playwright, or writer of creative or traditional nonfiction.

Human Minds and Animal Stories

Human Minds and Animal Stories PDF Author: Wojciech Małecki
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429590059
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
The power of stories to raise our concern for animals has been postulated throughout history by countless scholars, activists, and writers, including such greats as Thomas Hardy and Leo Tolstoy. This is the first book to investigate that power and explain the psychological and cultural mechanisms behind it. It does so by presenting the results of an experimental project that involved thousands of participants, texts representing various genres and national literatures, and the cooperation of an internationally-acclaimed bestselling author. Combining psychological research with insights from animal studies, ecocriticism and other fields in the environmental humanities, the book not only provides evidence that animal stories can make us care for other species, but also shows that their effects are more complex and fascinating than we have ever thought. In this way, the book makes a groundbreaking contribution to the study of relations between literature and the nonhuman world as well as to the study of how literature changes our minds and society. "As witnessed by novels like Black Beauty and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a good story can move public opinion on contentious social issues. In Human Minds and Animal Stories a team of specialists in psychology, biology, and literature tells how they discovered the power of narratives to shift our views about the treatment of other species. Beautifully written and based on dozens of experiments with thousands of subjects, this book will appeal to animal advocates, researchers, and general readers looking for a compelling real-life detective story." - Hal Herzog, author of Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat : Why It’s So Hard To Think Straight About Animals

Good Prose

Good Prose PDF Author: Tracy Kidder
Publisher: Random House Incorporated
ISBN: 1400069750
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author of House and the editor of Atlantic Monthly share stories from their literary friendship and respective careers, offering insight into writing principles and mechanics that they have identified as elementary to quality prose.

Jane Austen and Sciences of the Mind

Jane Austen and Sciences of the Mind PDF Author: Beth Lau
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351401807
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
The essays in this volume interpret Jane Austen’s fiction through the lens of various sciences of the mind and brain, especially the cluster of disciplines implicated in the term cognitive science, including neuroscience, evolutionary biology, evolutionary and developmental psychology, and others. The field of cognitive literary studies has rapidly developed in the last few decades and achieved the status of an established (if still evolving) critical approach. One of the most popular authors to analyze from this perspective is Jane Austen. As numerous critics have noted, Austen was a keen observer of how the mind operates in its interactions with other minds, both when it functions successfully and when, as often happens, it goes awry, and her perceptions are often in synch with current neuroscientific and psychological research. Despite the widespread recognition of the special congruity between Austen’s novels and cognitive science, however, no book has been devoted to this subject. Jane Austen and Sciences of the Mind is the first monograph wholly comprised of readings of Austen’s oeuvre (juvenilia as well as all six completed novels) from cognitive and related psychological approaches. In addition, the volume operates under the assumption that cognitive and historicist approaches are compatible, and many essays situate Austen within the climate of ideas during her era as well as in relation to current research in the sciences and social sciences. Jane Austen and Sciences of the Mind offers a new lens for understanding and illuminating the concerns, techniques, and enduring appeal of Austen’s novels.

Mind the Text! Neurohermeneutics for Suspicious Readers

Mind the Text! Neurohermeneutics for Suspicious Readers PDF Author: Renata Gambino
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1036407616
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
At the convergence of human studies, biocultural and neuroscientific research, this book offers unprecedented insights into the interpretation of literary texts. It presents the neurohermeneutics of suspicion—a bold, innovative approach illuminating the intricate bond between literature and the human mind. Embracing ambiguity as a hallmark of literature, readers are encouraged to adopt a suspicious stance to unearth the complex, multilayered and dynamic nature of literary texts, thereby fully engaging their imagination and their embodied, emotional and imaginative faculties. Our exploration navigates the crossroads of language, thought, culture, and biology, delving into hidden layers of meaning within literary texts. This transformative exploration not only redefines literary scholarship but also offers lay readers a dynamic, immersive reading experience. Ultimately, this book aims to ignite curiosity, suspense, and surprise, transforming the act of reading into a creative and engaging journey through the depths of the human mind and aesthetic experiences.

Strangers to Ourselves

Strangers to Ourselves PDF Author: Rachel Aviv
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374600856
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
New York Times bestseller One of the top ten books of the year at The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, Vulture/New York magazine A best book of the year at Los Angeles Times, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Bookforum, The New Yorker, Vogue, Kirkus The acclaimed, award-winning New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv offers a groundbreaking exploration of mental illness and the mind, and illuminates the startling connections between diagnosis and identity. Strangers to Ourselves poses fundamental questions about how we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress. Drawing on deep, original reporting as well as unpublished journals and memoirs, Rachel Aviv writes about people who have come up against the limits of psychiatric explanations for who they are. She follows an Indian woman celebrated as a saint who lives in healing temples in Kerala; an incarcerated mother vying for her children’s forgiveness after recovering from psychosis; a man who devotes his life to seeking revenge upon his psychoanalysts; and an affluent young woman who, after a decade of defining herself through her diagnosis, decides to go off her meds because she doesn’t know who she is without them. Animated by a profound sense of empathy, Aviv’s gripping exploration is refracted through her own account of living in a hospital ward at the age of six and meeting a fellow patient with whom her life runs parallel—until it no longer does. Aviv asks how the stories we tell about mental disorders shape their course in our lives—and our identities, too. Challenging the way we understand and talk about illness, her account is a testament to the porousness and resilience of the mind.

Making Stories

Making Stories PDF Author: Jerome Seymour Bruner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674010994
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
Stories pervade our daily lives, from human interest news items, to a business strategy, to daydreams between chores. Stories are what we use to make sense of the world. But how does this work? This text examines this pervasive human habit and suggests ways to think about how we use stories.