Richardson Alan, Steen Francis F. Literature and the Cognitive Revolution. An Introduction

Poetics Today. — Volume 23. — Number 1. — Spring 2002. — p. 1-8.Literary studies and the cognitive sciences, pursuing common interests in language, mental acts, and linguistic artifacts, have developed markedly different approaches to similar phenomena of reading, imaginative involvement, and textual patterning. Until quite recently, the distance between them has drawn more attention than their possible convergence (Franchi and Güzeldere). A number of literary theorists and critics, however, have steadily been producing work that finds its inspiration, its methodology, and its guiding paradigms through a dialogue with one ormore fields within cognitive science: artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, post-Chomskian linguistics, philosophy of mind, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology.