|
| up a level post article search admin about rdf Karl's Fiction Writing Site |
from the dept. There's an interesting article at TCS Daily called When Darwin Meets Dickens, all about new directions in literary criticism. --Of course, the moment I say "literary criticism" people's eyes glaze over, and that's because we've had decades of postmodern obscurantism in that area, to the point where few people outside academia have any interest in the subject. But that may be about to change. How could literary studies be relevant in the 21st century? --What if it became a discipline in which stories, or narratives, were seen as windows to the cognitive functions of the human mind? As, in effect, working experiments in human cognition? This idea is being elaborated by a number of thinkers, as evidenced in recent books such as Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences. From the point of view of a working writer such as myself, this trend of investigation is promising because it holds out the possibility of creating objectively measurable criteria for the coherency of a narrative. You'll notice I did not say criteria of quality or aesthetic value or any of that crap. --And that's all to the good. From the point of view of the sciences, an understanding of the cognitive structures of narrative has even broader consequences. In my last novel, Lady of Mazes, I proposed a future in which people lived in synthetic constructs literally called "narratives" which had the function of ensuring that there was no longer any such thing as a meaningless experience for people. The narratives were a replacement for, eg. religion, which slots believers into roles in a vast cosmic drama--making sense of life through narrative. More modestly, understanding how people transform experiences into narratives (or vice versa) could be of tremendous benefit to understanding and anticipating how the public will react to political events, disasters, etc. and how individuals interact with the increasingly intelligent technology that surrounds them. Haptics and biomimicry are just the start of it. Literary criticism is no longer a subject that can be ignored. Not if, married to cognitive science and evolutionary theory, it becomes one of the most powerful tools for comprehending and modifying human behaviour. < | >
|
|
||||
|
||||||
|
|
"Even if I should learn that the world would end tomorrow, I would still plant this apple tree today." -- Martin Luther | |
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are
owned by their respective companies.
Comments are owned by the Poster.
The Rest is owned and distributed by Karl Schroeder under the following license: |
||
