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▪ ‘Having One’s Cake and Eating It:
Smell, Flavour, and Memory in Proust’, Graduate Interdisciplinary
Research Seminar on the Senses, English Faculty, University of Oxford,
28.11.2012
▪ ‘The Art and Science of Hunger in
Kafka’s
“A Hunger Artist”’,
Cultural Pathologies seminar series, Centre for Modern European
Literature, University of Kent, 25.10.2012
My starting point
is Kafka’s story about a man who starves himself to death even though no
one’s really interested in watching him do so. The story has often been
interpreted as the evocation of an anorexic experience, and I ask
whether this is a useful ‘diagnosis’, noting both similarities and
differences between the anorexic and the ‘hunger artist’. I suggest that
many interpretations of this text not only fall into the dualist trap of
dissociating mind from body, but also fall victim to myths about the
superiority of mind over body that are often upheld by anorexics
themselves. I argue that a scientifically informed perspective which
emphasises the embodied nature of cognition lets us interpret literary
texts both more precisely and more inclusively. Given that my discussion
will draw at times on my own experience of anorexia, I also suggest that
literary studies might sometimes be enriched if its practitioners
allowed their own pathological or otherwise sensitive real-world
experiences to inform their academic thought.
▪ ‘Kafka's Castle: Vision and
Imagination in Visual Art and Literature’,
First Visual
Science of Art Conference, Alghero, Sardinia, 1-2.9.2012
This paper shows how literature can
provide a context for drawing connections between visual perception,
imagination, and visual art. Visual perception is an important element
of literary art and the experiences it induces in readers: the ways in
which characters are described as perceiving the fictional world have
significant effects on readers’ imaginative responses to this world (see
e.g. Troscianko (ET), 2010, Language and Literature, 19, 151-171). I
describe an experimental paradigm in which I evaluate experiences
induced by the opening of Kafka’s The Castle by 1) using a simple online
measure of ‘presence’ (see e.g. Troscianko (T) and Hinde, 2011, i-Perception
2, 216 (in press)) and 2) asking participants to draw what they had
imagined while reading. The results enrich the connections that can be
drawn between specific approaches within vision science, notably the
sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness (e.g. O’Regan
and Noë, 2001, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 939-1031), and
theories/concepts relating to visual detail and perspective in visual
and verbal art. The empirical convergence of visual and verbal art helps
us tease out distinctions between imagining, seeing, and conceptualising
seeing, and suggests further avenues for exploring how vision acts as a
mediator of aesthetic experience.
(I actually didn't use the presence
measure, since it proved impracticable for the short section of text I
was using. But it will be happen in the future!)
▪ ‘Science and Literary Criticism’, a one-day
interdisciplinary symposium convened by Emily Troscianko and Michael
Burke at St
John’s College, Oxford, 12 April 2012. View the symposium programme
(including abstracts and speaker biographies)
here.
▪ ‘Representation versus Enaction in
Vision, Imagination, and Literary Artworks’ (What
Are Artworks and How Do We Experience Them?, Aarhus University
Center for Semiotics, 26-28.1.2012)
My research
draws on literary studies and the sciences of the mind (including
psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind) in
the exploration of experiences and interpretations prompted by literary
artworks. Current work on what I call ‘cognitive realism’ – which
denotes the degree of correspondence established between cognitive
processes in the reader and their textual evocation in literary artworks
– suggests that literature can induce experiences that may either differ
significantly from, or bear close resemblance to, experiences of the
real world and its objects. In this paper I focus on the cognitive
continuum established in all literary works between vision (in the
fictional characters) and imagination (in the reader), two faculties
which are closely connected in both neural and phenomenological terms.
Considering current scientific research on vision and imagination in
relation to works of literary Realism and Modernism yields new ways of
thinking about ‘representation’ in literature and visual perception, and
encourages a sceptical stance as regards the explanatory purchase of the
‘neural correlates’ of real-world or aesthetic experience. The
sufficiency and necessity of representation (as phenomenological feature
and brain state) in accounting for conscious experience is challenged by
accounts based on embodied and situated enaction.
▪ ‘Science and the Study of
Literature’ (Oxford
Literature and Science Seminar, Oxford University, 25.11.2011)
Abstract:
In this talk I discuss how science can be of value
to literary scholars as a source of insights not only about the era and
intellectual context in which a given text was created, but also about
textual features and their potential effects on readers. In particular,
cognitive science, psychology, consciousness studies, and philosophy of
mind can illuminate the ways in which fictional characters and worlds
are created through the linguistic evocation of cognition, and help us
understand how connections may be established between a character’s and
a reader’s cognitive processes. I introduce the concept of ‘cognitive
realism’, denoting the direct correspondence between textual evocation
of cognition and cognitive realities as demonstrated by current science,
and argue for the value of this concept as a critically productive
perspective from which to analyse literary texts. I give examples in the
areas of visual perception and memory, from Kafka, Flaubert, and Proust.
▪ ‘Kafka and Cognitive Science’ (Bristol
Vision Institute Lunchtime Seminar, Bristol University, 16.6.2010)
Abstract: My research investigates
the cognitive basis of readers’ responses to fictional texts. How do
words on a page trigger our imaginations? Does a more ‘realistic’ text
do so more effectively? My doctoral research into the ‘Kafkaesque’
reading experience has yielded an approach to literary criticism that
seeks to provide precise and generalisable answers to these questions.
In particular, my research has generated the insight that whereas
traditional nineteenth-century literary Realism (think Dickens, Zola,
etc.) assumes we build up detailed mental ‘pictures’ of the world around
us, and hence that texts which evoke fictional worlds can best do so by
means of verbally painted pictures, various areas of current cognitive
science show that this is not so: we see and engage with the world
enactively rather than pictorially. Texts, such as Kafka’s, that do not
describe scenes in picture-like detail are therefore more ‘cognitively
realistic’ in a perceptual sense. The term ‘cognitive realism’ can be
broadened to denote how a text directly engages any number of specific
cognitive processes of the reader, and provides a framework within which
to explore aspects of cognition as evoked in the fiction and engaged in
the reader. These include vision and imagination, memory, attention,
agency, and emotion. Empirical work can help further deepen our
understanding of how real readers respond to works of fiction, as they
exemplify different sorts of cognitive realism; I will briefly describe
an experiment I carried out which measured the facets of the enactive
experience of reading Kafka and points ways forward for future empirical
studies of literature. The primary aim of my research is to apply our
most advanced understanding of perception and cognition directly to
great examples of literary fiction, taking the fundaments of science and
literature and building them into a new discipline that employs and
enriches both.
▪ ‘The Literary Science of the
“Kafkaesque”’ (Web
/ Art / Science Camp 2010, Great Western Studios, London, 6.11.2010) |
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My talk began with a
demonstration of ‘change blindness’, which was used to introduce the
scientific finding that we see much less than we think we do, and do not
build up detailed, accurate, picture-like mental representations of
scenes in order to interact with them; vision is not representation, but
action, and the world is available to us through ongoing interaction
with it. I gave some examples of how Kafka evokes vision as fallible and
as enactive, and argued that this helps us understand his narrative
style, and more generally the phenomenon of the ‘Kafkaesque’, an
experience at once compelling (because cognitively realistic) and
unsettling (because contrary to our assumptions about how vision works
and how fiction evokes it. I briefly mentioned my current research,
which takes the concept of ‘cognitive realism’ as a basis for exploring
other authors in the periods of Realism and Modernism, in both German
and French literature, and with reference to other cognitive faculties
such as memory, emotion, and attention. I then described a pilot study
that involved having subjects draw what they imagined when reading the
opening paragraph of Kafka’s novel The Castle, and a fuller
empirical study measuring participants’ responses to a short story by
Kafka (‘Jackals and Arabs’. This used a free-response format, followed
by categorisation and numerical coding by independent judges, and
enriched my theoretical conclusions about the ‘Kafkaesque’ by
empirically demonstrating specific manifestations of the ‘compelling yet
unsettling’ duality: association and speculation or
extrapolation, for example, were present simultaneously with uncertainty
or confusion.
▪ ‘The Scientific Future of Literary
Criticism’ (Literary
Studies Now, University of Oxford, 27.4.2009)
Abstract: Literary criticism risks
atrophy and irrelevance if it does not embrace scientific advances in
understanding how our minds work. To read is to engage processes of
cognition and imagination; therefore to understand the reading
experience, and hence any ‘meaning’ we derive from a text, we must
embrace what other disciplines can contribute to our understanding of
the cognitive processes of the reader. I will advocate a form of
‘cognitive literary criticism’ that combines scientific insights and
empirical methodology with the critical traditions of close textual
analysis, to enrich the study of literature.
The approach I propose applies our
most advanced understanding of perception and cognition directly to
great examples of literary fiction. This way of describing,
understanding, and classifying literary texts allows us to propose a new
and cognitively valid definition of the elusive term ‘realism’. The
resulting psychologically valid interpretations of texts not only permit
but demand experimental corroboration or falsification: this approach
yields testable hypotheses about how the words on the page affect the
reader’s experience of the fictional world. I will discuss an experiment
I have designed (as part of my D.Phil.) to measure readers’ responses to
Kafka’s writing, and the possibilities this study suggests for a more
ambitious programme of empirical reader-response research.
Equally essential to this broadening
of literary criticism is the attempt to make its findings more
accessible and of greater interest to a wider audience. Almost all of us
spend much of our time reading fiction; therefore we all have an
interest in what makes some texts so powerful and others not. Literary
criticism will not risk being deemed ‘worthless’ or ‘irrelevant’ if it
can evolve to convey to all sorts of readers the excitements involved in
finding out what happens when we read, and why we keep on reading.
▪ ‘The Literary Science of the
“Kafkaesque”’ (Modern German Graduate Seminar, University of Oxford,
6.11.2009)
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▪ ‘Seeing in a Kafkaesque World’
(Annual Conference of the Poetics and Linguistics Association:
Time and the Text,
University of Sheffield, 23-26.7.2008)
Abstract: How does a novel tempt us
to read it? To make us read and want to go on reading, a fictional
narrative has to draw us somehow into the fictional world that it
creates, and keep drawing us through that world. We experience the real
world around us through active exploration: seeing is knowing how the
world will look if we act in certain way: an ongoing enactive mastery of
the ‘web of contingencies’ connecting our own actions and how they will
make the world look. This way of defining our experience of reality,
known in psychology as sensorimotor theory, is very different from the
traditional notion that we cumulatively build up a static internal
representation of the world by looking at it; it makes time, and
perpetual potentiality, a crucial element of all our perceptual
experience. And this notion of vision as action applies equally to
imagination, and hence to the imagined ‘realities’ that we create and
inhabit when we read.
What literature does is: it
describes; that is, it makes the reader imagine spaces that collectively
constitute a fictional world ‘seen’ in ‘the mind’s eye’ – and not by
means of ‘pictures in the head’. The brain processes involved in seeing
and in imagining are known to be closely connected; so our investigation
of the literary evocation of fictional worlds should be grounded in an
understanding of how real people both see the real, external world
around them, and imagine unreal worlds. And if a text can tap into
fundamental processes by which we see and imagine, it can evoke its
fictional world with a power and efficiency, or subtlety, that gives our
experience of it all the ease of apparent spontaneity – as if that world
really were there, and we being drawn through it. I will argue that
textual evocations such as Kafka’s – which do away with the pictorial
assumptions about language, imagination, and vision that inform much
Realist writing – stimulate our cognitive processes of seeing and
imagining to create a reading experience that unfolds in time through a
powerful mix of potentiality and indeterminacy and seeming
self-evidence. I will take examples from Kafka’s The Trial to
show how the temporality of such experiences can illuminate both the
(non-pictorial) proximity of seeing and imagining and thereby also how
fictional realities can be at once so unsettling and so very real.
▪ ‘Kafkaesque Spaces: Images in the Mind of the Reader’ (Forty-Second National Postgraduate Colloquium in German Studies,
University of Kent, 3.11.2007)
Abstract: What does literature do?
Literature describes; that is, it evokes images in a reader’s mind,
images which collectively constitute a fictional world in the form of a
mental space ‘seen’ in ‘the mind’s eye’. Our investigation of the
literary evocation of fictional worlds should therefore be grounded in
an understanding of how real people both see real, external space, and
imagine unreal spaces. The processes involved in vision and in mental
imagery are closely connected; writers’ descriptions of space draw on
visual perception in order to prompt the reader’s cognitive construction
of a space experienced through mental imagery. Kafka’s powerful
evocations of space, so often hovering ambiguously on the edge of
Realism, and created in the context of a general (scientific,
philosophical, and artistic) destabilisation of space in the Modernist
era, invite a focussed exploration of some of the processes by which
literature operates. Kafka’s works provide particularly illuminating
demonstrations of the interactions of space, vision, imagery, and
emotion that literary texts can create. Specifically, his descriptions
often have deep affinities with the most promising of our current
theories of vision and imagery, which do away with the notion of seeing
as the building up of a pictorial representation and replace it with the
concept of vision as action. I shall argue that exploration of the
interactions that literature creates makes sense only if it is centred
on the responses of a real reader – who senses the real world, as well
as interpreting the text – and if it makes theoretical claims that are
at least in principle empirically testable. If literary criticism is to
give deep and detailed answers to the big questions of why we read and
what happens when we read, it should incorporate scientific
understanding of the cognitive and perceptual processes of the reader
and how they interact with the text as a verbal entity. I will give
examples of some exploratory investigations of reader response and
discuss how these can enrich literary criticism. |