'This unique book on neurocognitive interpretations of Australian literature covers a wide range of analyses by discussing Australian Literary Studies, Aboriginal literary texts, women writers, ethnic writing, bestsellers, neurodivergence fiction, emerging as well as high profile writers, literary hoaxes and controversies, book culture, LGBTIQA+ authors, to name a few. It eclectically brings together a wide gamut of cognitive concepts and literary genres at the intersection of Australian literary studies and cognitive literary studies in the first single-author volume of its kind. It takes Australian Literary Studies into the age of neuroawareness and provides new pathways in contemporary criticism.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Tony Hughes-d’Aeth
INTRODUCTION: GOING THE EXTRA SCHOLARLY MILE
PART I: COGNITION AND LITERARY CULTURE
1 Up for a Cha(lle)nge? A Case for Cognitive Australian Literary Studies
2 Do Judge a Book by Its Cover! Attraction and Attachment in Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief
PART II: COGNITION AND THE MIND
3 Gazing Inward and Outward: (Trans)Formation in C.J.Koch’s Bildungsroman Protagonist and Readers
4 Australian High-Functioning ASD Fiction in the Age of Neurodiversity: Graeme Simsion’s Rosie Trilogy
PART III: COGNITION AND THE BODY
5 The Erotics of Writing and Reading Australian Novels: Linda Jaivin, Frank Moorhouse and John Purcell’s Art of Dealing with Dirt
6 Brains in Pain and Coping Bodies: Trauma, Scars, Wounds, and the Mind-Body Relationship in Western Australia Aboriginal Literature
PART IV: COGNITION AND EMOTIONS
7 Angry Gay Men: Rage, Race and Reward in Contemporary Australian Advocacy Fiction
8 No Time for Outrage? The Demidenko Affair: Literary Representations, Criticism and Moral Emotions in The Hand That Signed the Paper
'On the back of his latest edited collection of Australian cognitive literary criticism, Jean-François Vernay has produced his own contribution to the field, Neurocognitive Interpretations of Australian Literature: Criticism in the Age of Neuroawareness (2021). Both in his literature review and his own analyses, Vernay paints an exciting picture of the present and future of Australian cognitive literary studies, with each chapter taking a different cognitively informed approach against the backdrop of dominant paradigms in the sciences of the mind: embodied and affective cognition. The work covers an impressive range of texts (from literature of the margins to mainstream popular authors) and approaches (including cognitive historicism, affect studies, and reader reception). This eclectic assortment makes no unified argument but rather models different aspects of the field, and the various kinds of knowledge produced by juxtaposing literary and scientific theory.' (Introduction)
'On the back of his latest edited collection of Australian cognitive literary criticism, Jean-François Vernay has produced his own contribution to the field, Neurocognitive Interpretations of Australian Literature: Criticism in the Age of Neuroawareness (2021). Both in his literature review and his own analyses, Vernay paints an exciting picture of the present and future of Australian cognitive literary studies, with each chapter taking a different cognitively informed approach against the backdrop of dominant paradigms in the sciences of the mind: embodied and affective cognition. The work covers an impressive range of texts (from literature of the margins to mainstream popular authors) and approaches (including cognitive historicism, affect studies, and reader reception). This eclectic assortment makes no unified argument but rather models different aspects of the field, and the various kinds of knowledge produced by juxtaposing literary and scientific theory.' (Introduction)