Bøger i Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance serien

This book investigates how writers and readers of Renaissance literature deployed 'kinesic intelligence', a combination of pre-reflective bodily response and reflective interpretation.

Narratives of possession have survived in early English medical and philosophical treatises. Using ideas derived from cognitive science, this study moves through the stages of possession and exorcism to describe how the social, religious, and medical were internalized to create the varied manifestations of demon possession in early modern England.

This book examines how early modern and recently emerging theories of consciousness and cognitive science help us to re-imagine our engagements with Shakespeare in text and performance. Papers investigate the connections between states of mind, emotion, and sensation that constitute consciousness and the conditions of reception in our past and present encounters with Shakespeare¿s works. Acknowledging previous work on inwardness, self, self-consciousness, embodied self, emotions, character, and the mind-body problem, contributors consider consciousness from multiple new perspectives¿as a phenomenological process, a materially determined product, a neurologically mediated reaction, or an internally synthesized identity¿approaching Shakespeare¿s plays and associated cultural practices in surprising and innovative ways.

An epistemological inquiry into the dynamics of interpersonal trust-relations, combining philosophy, science, and critical theory in the analysis of performing bodies - on stage and in life. Rokotnitz argues for the exploration of drama as a conduit to emotional learning that can change the somatic identity of performers and audiences alike.