ISSN 0333-5372
3 papers in the library · 22 citations · publishing 2011-2019
Poetics Today September 1, 2019 E. Bradburn
Is reading poetry good for you? Drawing on evidence that reading poetry involves some of the same brain structures as those upon which human psychological well-being depends, this essay argues that George Herbert’s devotional lyrics, long understood as Christian meditations, center on recurring images in a manner consistent with the modern practice of mindfulness meditation. There is a...
Poetics Today December 1, 2011 David S. Miall
In his early poetic writing (around 1797–99), William Wordsworth (1770–1850) often expressed a sense of animism: a sentience to be found not only in living beings but also in the air and in stones. Support for the underlying, psychological meaning of Wordsworth’s account is provided by recent developments in the study of embodied cognition, now taken as shaped by feelings and by our different...
Poetics Today March 1, 2011 Jane F. Thrailkill 22 citations
Drawing on cognitive science, literary critics such as Mark Turner have affirmed that for human beings thinking is crucially bound up with narrative. This essay examines how Ian McEwan in his novel Saturday (2005) adds a specifically affective element to the human engagement with narrative through a focus on the neurobiology of consciousness. By casting a neurosurgeon as his protagonist, McEwan...