Paper Minds

"In this series of elegantly connected essays, Jonathan Kramnick excavates a kinetic, haptic, and immersive alternative to contemplative aesthetics in the eighteenth century and follows its ramifications into contemporary debates about theory of mind. How does free indirect discourse offer its own way of working through the 'hard problem' of consciousness? What can apostrophe teach us about the supposed divide between perceiving the world and acting in it? Moving deftly from locodescriptive poetry and common sense philosophy to novels about cognitive science, these astute and sometimes polemical writings broaden our understanding of what an aesthetics and ethics of everyday dwelling might be and of how literary forms provide unique insight on theories of perception."--Sianne Ngai, University of Chicago "Paper Minds is beautifully written in elegant, witty prose with maximum clarity. It makes original contributions to at least three fields: cognitive literary criticism, eighteenth-century British studies, and the study of contemporary literature. This is a book to read and re-read carefully, and to feature prominently in any discussion concerning the contributions and merits of a cognitive approach to literature."--Alan Richardson, Boston College, author of The Neural Sublime "The essays assembled here are distinguished by a supple, eloquent prose and by their humane tone. They offer an eye-opening picture of how, from the eighteenth century onward, a particular set of literary forms has made it possible to set down 'perceptual or emotional or cognitive experience on the page.' Paper Minds is a landmark book both for scholars of eighteenth-century literary studies and for scholars from other periods working at the intersection between literary analysis and cognitive science."--Deidre Shauna Lynch, Harvard University "Paper Minds places literary study proudly in the company of other university disciplines, both in theory and in practice. Kramnick's philosophic concerns and his precision about cognition drive brilliant readings that range from all but forgotten landscape poems, to old novels as obscure as The Blazing World or as familiar as Robinson Crusoe, to prize-winning novelists of the present century. He probes the mystery of conscious experience with revelatory lucidity. His aesthetics of craft and the everyday--if perhaps tinged with urban nostalgia--precisely carve out an alternative to the classic aesthetics of distance."--John Bender, Stanford University