Learning Outcomes:
Students should be able to
- have insight into the most recent breakthroughs in the brain sciences and their relevance to the study of literature and drama.
- understand the potential, but also the limitations of, an emprical approach to literary study.
- grasp the challenges and benefits entailed in interdisciplinarity.
- comprehend new perspectives on themes central to the analysis of fictional artefacts, such as memory, imagination, visualisation, the “inner voice”, affect, emotional embodiment, transport and empathy.
- feel confident using the basic terminology of the brain sciences, and of basic brain structure.
- be able to bring a scientific perspective into their critical discussion of prose fiction and plays.
- be able to understand the different processes at work as we experience emboodied storytelling (drama) and stories for the eyes/inner ear (reading fiction).
- become aware of the rise of the “neuronovel”, some of its key exponents, and of playwrights and drama companies who are actively engaging with this material.
- understand how the notion of neurodiversity was fortified and augmented by much of the recent research in the brain sciences.
Indicative Module Content:
Week one: Why science has a place in the study of Literature: unexpected links and surprising twists. Introduction and chapter one, Brain, Mind and the Narrative Imagination. (Comer, Taggart).
Week two: Bulletins from the front line. Neurozealots and neurosceptics.
A.S. Byatt, “Fiction informed by Science”, Nature, 434, 294-7
“Observe the neurones” (2006) TLS, September 22nd
Ian Mc Ewan, “Literature, Science and human nature” in J. Gottschall and D.S Wilson (eds) The Literary Animal, 5-19, Northwestern U.P.
R. Tallis (2008) “The Neuroscience delusion:” TLS, April 9th
Excerpts: (1995) A.S. Byatt The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, Vintage.
Week three: The Scheherazade syndrome. Deep time, oral storytelling and the evolution of narrative and drama.
P.W. Wiessner (2014) “Embers of society: firelight talk among the Ju/hoansi bushmen” Proceedings of the Nat. Acad. Sciences, 111:14027 – 35
Selected passages from R. Kearney (2002) "On Stories", Routledge.
Week four: “The mystery of the reading ape”: how and why literacy developed, empathy, and what happens to our brain when we read fiction.
Selections from: P.C. Hogan The Mind and its Stories, C.U.P. (2003)
S. Dehaene Reading in the Brain: the new science of how we read,
Penguin (2010)
L.Zushine Why we read fiction (2006) Ohio U.P.
Excerpt from novel: J. Crace The Gift of Stones (1988) Scribners
Week five: The view from the stalls. Embodied storytelling, and the ongoing debate about emotion.
B. McConachie Engaging Audiences: A Cognitive Approach to Spectating in the Theatre (2008), Chapter 1, Pages 23-63.
Selection from: P. Davis Shakespeare Thinking (2007) Bloomsbury.
Play : Curious Directive, Return to the Silence (2009) – The Story of Jill Bolte Taylor
Week six: The divided self. The mysteries of the bilateral brain.
Selections from: Jill Bolte Taylor My Stroke of Insight (2009) Penguin.
Iain Mc Gilchrist, The Master and his Emissary (2009) Yale U.P.
Play: Samuel Beckett, Endgame.
Week seven: “Imagination Dead Imagine”. New insights into the workings of the imagination, and mental “schema”.
Selections from: E. Scarry Dreaming by the Book, (2001) Princeton U.P.
P. Mendelsund What we see when we read (2014) Vintage.
Excerpts from W.Golding, The Inheritors, Faber.
Week eight: Mind-reading (so-called “theory of mind”) how we apply it reading fiction, or watching a play. Neurodiversity.
K.Oatley Bookworms versus Nerds, Exposure to fiction versus non-fiction, Divergent Associations with social ability. (2006) in J. Res Personality, pages 694-712
Excerpts from: M. Haddon The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (2003) Cape.
Week nine: Memory – types of memory – autobiographical, procedural, short-term, long-term. The narrative construction of self.
Play: The New Electric Ballroom, Enda Walsh.
Short story: Funes The Memorious, Jorge Luis Borges
Week ten: “I didn’t see that coming”: plot, predictive processing and the pseudo-reality of page and stage. Imagination as memory cast forwards. Recap and conclusion.
Excerpts from Siri Hustvedt Memories of the Future (2018)
Play: Harold Pinter Betrayal