The Secret Life Of Literature Av Lisa Zunshine

<b>An innovative account that brings together cognitive science, ethnography, and literary history to examine patterns of “mindreading” in a wide range of literary works.</b><br><br>For over four thousand years, writers have been experimenting with what cognitive scientists call “mindreading”: constantly devising new social contexts for making their audiences imagine complex mental states of characters and narrators. In <i>The Secret Life of Literature</i>, Lisa Zunshine uncovers these mindreading patterns, which have, until now, remained invisible to both readers and critics, in works ranging from <i>The Epic of Gilgamesh</i> to <i>Invisible Man</i>. Bringing together cognitive science, ethnography, and literary studies, this engaging book transforms our understanding of literary history.<br> <br>Central to Zunshine’s argument is the exploration of mental states “embedded” within each other, as, for instance, when Ellison’s Invisibl