How Literature Plays with the Brain: The Neuroscience of Reading and Art

240 Pages·2013·2.79 MB·English

by  Armstrong

How Literature Plays with the Brain
This page intentionally left blank
How Literature Plays
with the Brain
The Neuroscience of Reading and Art
Paul B. Armstrong
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore
© 2013 The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2013
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Johns Hopkins University Press
2715 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363
www.press.jhu.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Armstrong, Paul B., 1949–
How literature plays with the brain : the neuroscience of reading and art /
Paul B. Armstrong.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4214-1002-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-1-4214-1003-6
(electronic) — ISBN 1-4214-1002-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-4214-
1003-6 (electronic)
1. Reading, Psychology of. 2. Psychology and literature.
3. Neurosciences and the arts. 4. Literature—Psychology. I. Title.
BF456.R2A86 2013
801'.92—dc23
2012044603
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more
information, please contact Special Sales at 410-516-6936 or specialsales@
press.jhu.edu.
The Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book
materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30
percent post-consumer waste, whenever possible.
For Beverly
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Preface ix
1 The Brain and Aesthetic Experience 1
2 How the Brain Learns to Read and the Play of Harmony
and Dissonance 26
3 The Neuroscience of the Hermeneutic Circle 54
4 The Temporality of Reading and the Decentered Brain 91
5 The Social Brain and the Paradox of the Alter Ego 131
Epilogue 175
Notes 183
Index 213
This page intentionally left blank
Preface
Why should a professor of literature like myself find neuroscience so fascinat-
ing? That is a question I have often asked as I found myself swept away by a
growing sense of excitement and urgency while reading the technical, often
dauntingly difficult neurobiological literature about action potentials, neu-
ronal assemblies, phase-locking oscillations, mirror neurons, and so forth.
Why immerse myself in this tough stuff when I could be reading a novel?
At the risk of sounding naive and trite, I attribute this fascination in part
simply to my interest as a humanist in what makes us human. That is an
interest that neuroscience and literary studies share. Literature matters to
me, among other reasons, for what it reveals about human experience, and
the very different perspective of neuroscience on how the brain works is part
of that story. What has surprised and excited me, however, is the plethora of
unexpected convergences I have come across between the experimental find-
ings of neuroscience and what I know as a literary critic and theorist about
reading, interpretation, and the aesthetic experience. Again and again, while
reading neuroscientific accounts of the structure and functions of the brain,
I have been struck by how these matched up with views I had developed from
a lifetime of thinking, teaching, and writing about the experience of reading
and the interpretation of literary texts. These similarities are extensive and
deep, I think, for reasons that have to do with fundamental brain processes at
play in the aesthetic experience. Working out these parallels and convergen-
ces in detail is the primary purpose of this book.
My central argument is that literature plays with the brain through experi-
ences of harmony and dissonance that set in motion and help to negotiate
oppositions that are fundamental to the neurobiology of mental functioning—
basic tensions in the operation of the brain between the drive for pattern, syn-
thesis, and constancy versus the need for flexibility, adaptability, and open-
ness to change. The brain’s ability to play in a to-and-fro manner between
competing imperatives and mutually exclusive possibilities is a consequence