'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)
