Title: Patrick Colin Hogan and Lalita Pandit, Eds. Cognitive Shakespeare: Criticism and Theory in the Age of Cognitive Science
Abstract: Patrick Colin Hogan and Lalita Pandit, eds. Cognitive Shakespeare: Criticism and Theory in the Age of Cognitive Science. Spec. issue of College Literature 33.1 (2006): 1-255. The complex and mutually beneficial interaction between studies and the sciences is already an established fact of multidisciplinary scholarship. The collection of essays under review represents another promising testament to the relatively slow but steady rise of interest in this undoubtedly profitable interaction. Specifically, the collection is characterized by the use of science to throw light on aspects of literature, rather than the use of literature to illustrate findings from science. The editors' stated intent in this book is to expose some of the diversity that marks science today, and to explore the implications of this diversity for (2). In terms of the study of literature, this kind of enterprise is seen by the editors as making an important contribution to the process of reconciling the cognitive universalism of scientific endeavor and the literary particularism of humanistic explorations. The essays in this collection are divided into three sections: one on general theoretical issues in number of Shakespeare's plays; another on more detailed and historically specific analyses of some other of his plays: and finally, third one where empirical and interpretative methods are used to highlight issues of contemporary reception of the playwright's work. The first section, Theorizing Cognition: Understanding Shakespearean Patterns, begins with an essay by Keith Oatley on the links between simulation and understanding character psychology in fiction or theatre. He develops his claim that are simulations that run on minds (15), a kind of software that we can pick up remotely from texts (30), and argues that they provide an insightful and distinctive experience of emotion as well as an understanding of character. Drawing on Stephen Greenblatt's (2004) observation that one of Shakespeare's unique achievements as writer was his omission of an element of motivation in the plot, Oatley suggests that Shakespearean impact can be better understood in terms of the response that such omissions may trigger in the reader or audience. Hence, the unique suggestiveness of Shakespeare's plays enables us to explore understanding not just of his characters but of ourselves. Patrick Colm Hogan's essay in this section draws on his previous work on cross-cultural narrative patterns and their roots in basic and universal emotional propensities. Having identified what he calls prototypical heroic narrative he goes on to reveal how Shakespearean narrative pattern of this kind deviates from the prototype. He claims that four of the plays he analyzes (Julius Caesar, Richard II, Hamlet, and The Tempest) show distinctive use of the heroic structure, namely, an ambivalence about the heroic plot. Of all Shakespearean heroic tragicomedies only Henry V, Hogan maintains, fails to undermine the main ideological function of the genre and in this sense does not diverge from the prototype. The last essay in this section is by Donald R. Wehrs and draws on some work by Damasio but also on what Wehrs terms Renaissance moral physiologists (most famously represented by Erasmus) as well as moral philosophers like Levinas to argue that ethical judgments can be seen to be derived from involuntary response. From this view, characters like Othello, Lear, Coriolanus, and Timon of Athens are all people asocial consistencies estrange them from practical rationality by estranging them from gratitude and responsiveness (75). Wehrs's main preoccupation, however, is with some of Shakespeare's mature tragic heroes, for example, Brutus and Hamlet, whose tragic fates he elaborates in terms of the contrast between somatic ethical responsiveness (more commonly known as empathy) and emotional dissociation. …
Publication Year: 2006
Publication Date: 2006-12-01
Language: en
Type: article
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