Shakespeare's Brain: Reading with Cognitive TheoryHere Mary Thomas Crane considers the brain as a site where body and culture meet to form the subject and its expression in language. Taking Shakespeare as her case study, she boldly demonstrates the explanatory power of cognitive theory--a theory which argues that language is produced by a reciprocal interaction of body and environment, brain and culture, and which refocuses attention on the role of the author in the making of meaning. Crane reveals in Shakespeare's texts a web of structures and categories through which meaning is created. The approach yields fresh insights into a wide range of his plays, including The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Measure for Measure, and The Tempest. |
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... structures, derived from early experiences of embodiment, which at least some cognitive scientists posit as the ... structural element that reflects in its outlines some of the patterns and connections of Shakespeare's mental lexicon. I ...
... structures of the brain, the embodied brain shapes discourse. Terence Deacon argued recently that the human brain and language have evolved together, each exerting a formative pressure on the other. He suggests imagining “language as an ...
... structures.”24 Because most of our thought seems inextricably bound up with language, it may be hard to imagine that ... structure,” which can then be mapped onto conscious images and eventually language.26 George Lakoff's theories of ...
... structures and rational concepts are similarly built up on these basic spatial schemas. Mandler provides as an example the basic image schemas of “containment” and “support,” which, she argues, allow the early acquisition of the ...
... structures of language probably reflect cognitive processes. From a cognitive perspective, the relationship between ... structure.”44 From a cognitive perspective, language is shaped, or “motivated,” by its origins in the neural systems ...
Contents
3 | |
The Comedy of Errors | 36 |
Chapter 2 Theatrical Practice and the Ideologies of Status in As You Like It | 67 |
Suitable Suits and the Cognitive Space Between | 94 |
Chapter 4 Cognitive Hamlet and the Name of Action | 116 |
Chapter 5 Male Pregnancy and Cognitive Permeability in Measure for Measure | 156 |
Chapter 6 Sound and Space in The Tempest | 178 |
Notes | 211 |
Index | 257 |