COLT 35.05 Stories on My Mind: Cognitive Approaches to the Novel
Novels dominate the field of literary fiction, but why? The field of cognitive literary studies seeks to answer this question and many related ones: how does the mind engage with a novel? Why do we as readers identify with fictional characters? How is it that we become absorbed in the storyworld of a novel? In this course we will read six novels that make us think about the relationship between the mind, cognitive processes, and narrative. We will also learn about quantitative and empirical studies of novel reading. What can they tell us about how readers experience novels?
The intention of the course is not to give a history of the novel, but rather, it is to allow us to think about novels, why we read them, how they function, why we think they help us (or harm us), and what is the place of the novel in the current media environment.