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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... words, connected in part by spatial metaphors, functions as a structural element that reflects in its outlines some of the patterns and connections of Shakespeare's mental lexicon. I believe that Shakespeare uses these words as focal ...
... words, Saussure argued that “reality is a diffuse continuum and our categorization of it is merely an artifact of culture and language.”41 Saussure also held (2) that language is a “self-contained, autonomous system”: “concepts, i.e. ...
... words, “by the brain as a means of maximizing distinctive experiences of photons striking the cones of the retina in blended streams of different wavelengths.” Through a process called “opponent processing,” the brain opposes signals ...
... word meaning were less “lexicalized” or restricted by an official dictionary definition than current theories and that ... words.57 We might even revisit Foucault's influential argument in The Order of Things that the early modern period ...
... words and formed into a grammatically acceptable sentence.62 The construction of the sentence would probably have involved the formation and linking of several “mental spaces,” or temporary areas of knowledge, in this case, perhaps ...
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 |