Full Description
Restoring the Human Context to Literary and Performance Studies argues that much of contemporary literary theory is still predicated, at least implicitly, on outdated linguistic and psychological models such as post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and behaviorism, which significantly contradict current dominant scientific views. By contrast, this monograph promotes an alternative paradigm for literary studies, namely Contextualism, and in so doing highlights the similarities and differences among the sometimes-conflicting contemporary cognitive approaches to literature and performance, arguing not in favor of one over the other but for Contextualism as their common ground.
Contents
Chapter 1. Introduction: The Human Contexts of Literary Studies.- Part I: Linguistics and the Legacy of Bakhtin's Philosophy of Language.- Chapter 2. Saussurean Linguistics and Bakhtin's Critique.- Chapter 3. On Theory, Rewriting Saussure, and Chomsky.- Chapter 4. Bakhtin and His Echoes.- Part II: Biology, Language, and the Brain.- Chapter 5. Evolution and Language.- Chapter 6. The Brain.- Chapter 7. Development of the Brain.- Part III: Psychology and the Development of the "Literary Mind".- Chapter 8. The Mind at Work.- Chapter 9. Development of the Mind.- Chapter 10. Theory of Mind (ToM).- Part IV: Context in Science and the Humanities.- Chapter 11. Cognitivism.- Chapter 12. Contextualism.- Chapter 13. Evolutionary Psychology.- Part V: Contextualism—Changing the Paradigm in Literary and Performance Studies for the Twenty-First Century.- Chapter 14. Cognitive Literary Studies.- Chapter 15. Cognitive Approaches to Performance Studies.- Chapter 16: Conclusion: The Bridging Function of Contextualism and the Cognitive Paradigm.
