Cirrus@Austlit

'This survey essay aims to map out the rise of the Australian neurohumanities by contextualising at a global and national level what is gradually shaping up as a new direction in Australian literary criticism. This cognitive literary history of Australian criticism begins with a definition and contextualisation of cognitive Australian literary studies and goes on to offer a bird’s eye view of cognitive-inspired fiction and nonfiction. This introductory chapter posits that the cognitive literary studies approach to Australian literature could be construed as a promising way to expand and refresh the field of Australian literary studies while generating interdisciplinarity. By providing a couple of specific examples of ground-breaking neurocognitive readings of Australian novels, the researcher at once challenges the resistance proffered by the curators of traditional fields and paves the way for promising overtures in the humanities.'

Source: Abstract.

'In this chapter, I approach contemporary Australian multiperspectival novels, i.e. texts in which the reader accesses the storyworld through different focalisers, from the perspective of narrative empathy. I argue that narrative empathy as a result of a text’s multiperspectivity can arise primarily if the narrative foregrounds conflict between focalisers. To illustrate this, I offer readings of Christos Tsiolkas’s The Slap (2008) and Gail Jones’s Five Bells (2011). Narrative empathy features differently in the two novels. While The Slap indeed invites readers to feel empathy on the basis of the multiperspectival structure of the text, this is not the case in Five Bells, since the narrative does not exacerbate conflict in the same way as Tsiolkas’s narrative does. At the same time, I suggest that it fulfils similar functions in both texts in that its main aim is to foster greater understanding for those whose subjectivities are marginalised within society.'

Source: Abstract.

'In this chapter, I explore my affective engagement with Charlotte Wood’s The Weekend (2019). Adopting definitions that reveal the nested hierarchies of feeling, affect, and emotion, I situate emotion as a semantic experience within the framework of thought, arguing that thought itself is an affectual process that carries meaning. Cognition, in other words, is an affective process. Thought’s affectual status is often overlooked, however, with the focus on its semantic content drawing attention from this; yet meaning affects us, and this is the function of thought as affect: it organises experience in ways that are, in turn, affecting. My approach to Wood’s novel aims to emphasise this and find firmer ground on which to perceive emotion as a kind of thought, noting that reading stimulates thinking in terms of grammatically established points of view.'

Source: Abstract.

'Indigenous literature has played a vital role in the reconstruction of Australia’s colonial and postcolonial history, contributing to the perspective of those who were dispossessed of their land and culture. The new century has also been generous with captivating voices that have continued and refigured the tradition, giving it new and inexhaustible political and poetic strength. This essay focusses on Kim Scott’s Taboo, a text which gives physical space, and its emotional and collective implications, a central value. This value is preserved in the following pages of the novel where the physicality of places and the materiality of objects have intrinsic emotional value, articulating a real narrative function, capable of catalyzing the forces at play in the text. The evocative vigour of the images endowed with this special ‘materiality’ becomes one of the significant features of the novel, and one of the bases for its poetic power in terms of empathy and healing.'

Source: Abstract.

'"Voice" is a term often used in literary criticism, yet it is difficult to define precisely. This chapter seeks to unpack how we move from what is essentially a biological process (of air moving through the flesh of vocal cords) to what a writer means when they talk about "voice" in a piece of writing. I aim to show that the literary voice "belongs to both the body and mind", it "bridges our internal and external worlds", and it is integral to storytelling. With a focus on the bush tradition in Australian short fiction, this chapter examines Cate Kennedy’s short story "Cold Snap", in relation to several cognitive capacities—paralanguage, inner space and hypostasizing—to explore the notion of literary "voice" as potentially more than a metaphorical moniker (as traditionally seen in narratology theories). Using this cognitive lens, I aim to study "voice" as a living entity in writing and reading processes.'

Source: Abstract.

'Sometimes a book has a mysterious power over readers. Conventionally the power is explained by theme, plot, character, narrative, style. This chapter, written by a novelist using an interdisciplinary approach, draws on the work of turn-of-the century neuroscientist John Briggs and more recently neuroscientist Professor Liane Gabora to look at a book’s power from a creator’s point of view. Apart from “just scribbling”, the reason for creating a book is not apparent to this novelist at first, but appears gradually during the writing as “an inkling” with multidimensional “fingerprints” of style and voice, and towards the end of the creation, feels to her as affirming, authentic and ultimately, healing. This healing may be contagious, and sensed by the reader. In the following chapter, the novelist describes the creating of her new unpublished but commissioned novel when the inkling refused to arrive; and how she had to – in Heidegger’s words – “wait upon” it, rather than “wait for” it.'

Source: Abstract.

'In this chapter, I analyse Specky Magee, a contemporary sports children’s narrative written by Garry Lyon and Felice Arena. This novel, published in 2002, is part of the larger homonymous series Specky Magee. Through a Neuro Lit Crit perspective, I close read selected passages from this book. It is proposed that Specky Magee could be employed in a narrative-persuasion-in-health context, the discipline dealing with the persuasive effects of narratives on people’s wellbeing. In particular, it is suggested that reading this novel could serve to encourage Australian children, who are at high risk for obesity, to exercise. To perform this analysis, I examine the potential of corporeal descriptions in Specky Magee, highlighting the possible influence exercised on its young readers by the characters’ successful engagement in football.'

Source: Abstract.

'Contemporary Aboriginal fiction frequently emphasises the significance of being interrelated with the land, or Country, which is often described as a bodily feeling. In this chapter, I draw on recent approaches to embodiment to explore the various ways in which novels by Kim Scott, Alexis Wright, and Tara June Winch convey a notion of feeling the land through embodied simulation. Examining a range of textual markers that evoke bodily reactions, I seek to show how Aboriginal fiction implicates the reader’s body to convey the vitality of the land and to potentially elicit moments of corporeal interconnectedness. This chapter shows that linking attention to form with cognitive approaches constitutes a helpful framework to explain the political and cultural work Aboriginal narratives do as literary interventions into current discourses about humanity’s relationship with the environment.'

Source: Abstract.