Culture and Cognition: The Boundaries of Literary and Scientific Inquiry

Ronald Schleifer; Robert Con Davis; Nancy Mergler

Published by Cornell University Press 1992

Culture and Cognition

The Boundaries of Literary and Scientific Inquiry

Ronald Schleifer , Robert Con Davis and Nancy Mergler
Funded by: National Endowment for the Humanities Open Book Program

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501738524

Overview
Contents

About this book

This groundbreaking book challenges the disciplinary boundaries that have traditionally separated scientific inquiry from literary inquiry. It explores scientific knowledge in three subject areas—the natural history of aging, literary narrative, and psychoanalysis. In the authors' view, the different perspectives on cognition afforded by Anglo-American cognitive science, Greimassian semiotics, and Lacanian psychoanalysis help us to redefine our very notion of culture.

Part I historically situates the concepts of meaning and truth in twentieth-century semiotic theory and cognitive science. Part II contrasts the modes of Freudian case history to the general instance of Einstein's relativity theory and then sets forth a rhetoric of narrative based on the discourse of the aged. Part III examines in the context of literary studies an interdisciplinary concept of cultural cognition.

Culture and Cognition will be essential reading for literary theorists, historians and philosophers of science; semioticians; and scholars and students of cultural studies, the sociology of literature, and science and literature.

Author / Editor information

Ronald Schleifer is the George Lynn Cross Research Professor of English at the University of Oklahoma. Robert Con Davis-Undiano is Professor of English at the University of Oklahoma and Executive Director of World Literature Today. Nancy Mergler is Professor of Psychology at the University of Oklahoma. Nancy Mergler is Professor of Psychology at the University of Oklahoma.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Introduction: Science, Cognition, and Culture Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
I. NARRATIVE STRUCTURES
1. Cognition and Narration: Binary Structures and the Nature of Meaning Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	37
2. Structures of Meaning: The Logic of Narrative and the Constitution of Literary Genres Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	64
3. Why Are There Old People? Narration, Natural History, and the Situation of Cognition Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	96
II. CASES OF COGNITION
4. Special Cases: Freud, Einstein, and the Dream of Understanding Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	125
5. Psychoanalysis and Narration: Lacan, Greimas, and the Desire of Cognition Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	148
6. The Plain Sense of Things: Aging and the Rhetoric of Narration Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	173
III. CULTURAL DISCOURSE
7. The Institution of Criticism: Pedagogy, Publishing, and Oppositional Criticism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	199
Bibliography of Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	245
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	263

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 294
Keywords: Literary Studies

eBook

Published: March 15, 2019
ISBN: 9781501738524