Neurohermeneutics A Transdisciplinary Approach to Literature

Abstract

The study of literature and arts in general has been recently enriched by the changes in the heuristic paradigms regarding the very essence of the cognitive processes implied by the artistic experience. In the frame of the epistemological changes occurred in the past decades, since the so-called "neuro-turn" and the definition of an "epistemology based on the brain" (see Edelman, 2007), the linkage of humanities, cognitive studies and neuroscience has put at stake the need of inquiring about arts and literature in a transdisciplinary perspective, in order to get new insights into how our mindbrain fulfils the mysterious process of imagining a fictional world, constructing new meanings out of this experience, and to develop a methodology to newly interpret arts and the literary text.In this perspective, the main focus of literature is human nature and the involved relationship among the human mind, the cognitive processes of the brain and the world. As Turner (1996) claimed years ago, literary criticism needs to take into account new results in the field of cognitive science and neurosciences, since only through the intertwining of art and cognitive neuroscientific research it will be possible to acquire innovative perspectives in the study of the human mind and arts. Narration -particularly literary narration -is the oldest and one of the most sophisticated products of the human mind; it therefore mirrors many of its more relevant processes. The brain processes that normally underlie the interaction of the human being with the world are reflected forcefully and in condensed manner especially in art and literature. Cognitive acts make use of narrative and creative processes, as reaffirmed in the past decades by several scholars, among them by Gibbs (1994), overcoming the classical distinction between usual thought, referred to action in the world, and the narrative literary one, referred to counterfactual worlds (Turner, 1996). Therefore, it seems inadequate to deal with a specific aesthetic phenomenon without considering the complexity in which it is rooted, that is to say the connection between the brain and its activity, and what such activity has produced and is nourished by -body, environment, GESTALT THEORY,

Towards Translational (Neuro)Hermeneutics of Landscape: Theoretical and Methodologial Considerations on Translational Analysis

“…Finally, in line with Gambino's and Pulvirenti's (2019) ideas on (neuro)hermeneutics, the concept of the neurohermeneutical circle shall be deployed as a heuristic tool in order to comprehend the dynamics of the translational experience as a complex network of meanings generated by both the author of the source text and by the translator and influencing the (implied) 5 reader's imagination and his/her generalized experience with the text that they are reading. The two worlds, that of the writer and that of the (implied) reader, intertwine to a considerable degree, with particu-lar parts and the whole interconnecting on many levels.…”

“…At the same time, though, it is plausible to claim that certain simulations, after all interpreted as specific cognitive processes, despite their strong individuation and differentiation, should also be marked by common features, especially in the case of groups of people sharing cultural and historical background. Gambino and Pulvirenti (2019) refer to this phenomenon in the following way: "The cognitive approach to the text implies that, despite all individual differences, all humans share some basic mental dynamics, which are condensed and abbreviated in the literary text; the author's view of the world can therefore be represented in the text and refeatured by the reader, by virtue of these shared mental dynamics" (195). According to this view, trigger-scenes lead to culture-specific imageries which are similar in individuals because of common denominators entrenched in a given society.…”

“…The title of this paper contains the term "(neuro)hermeneutics," which I follow Renata Gambino and Grazia Pulvirenti (2019) in understanding as a branch with the aim of describing "phenomenologically the mirroring process between the two extremes of the literary experience, i.e. the writer's creative process and the reader's imaginative reconfiguration of the text, and what they share in common.…”

Shakespeare sonnet reading: An empirical study of emotional responses

“…Analysing these distributions, it is possible to assess which mental processese.g. imagination and imaging (Magyari et al, 2020), strong affective emotional response (Lüdtke et al, 2014), or personal resonance (Jacobs, 2016;Larsen and Seilman, 1988) are prompted in association with which (clustering of) foregrounding features (Gambino and Pulvirenti, 2019). Hence, it can be assumed that poems with different foregrounding potential will prompt different types of affective and aesthetic responses.…”

“…Hence, a foregrounding analysis should be able to assess the potential impact of foregrounding elements that are intertwined and distributed across multiple lines of a poem. The Foregrounding Assessment Matrix (FAM; Gambino and Pulvirenti, 2018, 2019; Gambino et al, 2020) is especially developed to address this challenge. Theoretically, the FAM is based on a combination of classic structuralist theory (Jakobson and Lévi-Strauss, 1962; Lotman, 1977), foregrounding theory as developed in empirical studies of literature (Miall and Kuiken, 1994, 1998; Van Peer, 1986; Van Peer and Chesnokova, 2020) and more recent approaches in the field of (neuro)cognitive poetics (Burke and Troscianko, 2017; Carroll, 2012; Hogan, 2003; Jacobs, 2015a; Nicklas and Jacobs, 2017; Schrott and Jacobs, 2011; Steen, 2004; Stockwell, 2009a, 2009b; Willems and Jacobs, 2016).…”