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. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 55
... spatial patterns and structures, derived from early experiences of embodiment, which at least some cognitive scientists posit as the bases of human thought and language.5 I argue that in each of the plays examined here a network of ...
... spatial structures.”24 Because most of our thought seems inextricably bound up with language, it may be hard to imagine that one can exist without the other. However, evidence for the existence of pre- or nonverbal mental function takes ...
... spatial schemas. Mandler provides as an example the basic image schemas of “containment” and “support,” which, she argues, allow the early acquisition of the prepositions in and on in English-speaking infants.28 According to Lakoff, all ...
... thought—that of logic, mathematics, language, spatial or musical symbols—we must not forget that it ... undergoes flights and perchings, is susceptible to great variations in attention, and in general, EMBODYING THE AUTHOR-FUNCTION 23.
You have reached your viewing limit for this book.
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 |