The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies Oxford Handbooks Series

The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies applies developments in cognitive science to a wide range of literary texts that span multiple historical periods and numerous national literary traditions. The volume is divided into five parts: (1) Narrative, History, Imagination; (2) Emotions and Empathy; (3) The New Unconscious; (4) Empirical and Qualitative Studies of Literature; and (5) Cognitive Theory and Literary Experience. Most notably, the volume features case studies representing not just North American and British literary traditions, but also Argentinian (Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar), Chinese (Cao Xueqin), Colombian (García Márquez), Dominican (Junot Díaz), German (Theodore Fontane), French (Marcel Proust, Gustave Flaubert), Indian (Mirabai, Rabindranath Tagore, Kamala Markandaya, Mani Ratnam, Tito Mukhopadhyay), Mexican (Fernando del Paso), Polish (Krystof Kieslowski), Puerto Rican (Giannina Braschi), Russian (Lev Tolstoi), South African (J. M. Coetzee), and Spanish (Leopoldo Alas). Moreover, the volume will cover a variety of periods (e.g., Renaissance, Eighteenth century, Romantic, Victorian, and Modernist, and post-modern periods) and genres, including those associated with popular culture, such as science fiction (China Mieville), fantasy (Anne Rice), and graphic narratives (Rius's Los supermachos and Gilbert Hernandez's Troublemakers).

Lisa Zunshine is Bush-Holbrook Professor of English at the University of Kentucky. She is the author or editor of ten books, including Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel (Ohio State UP, 2006), Strange Concepts and the Stories They Make Possible: Cognition, Culture, Narrative (Johns Hopkins UP, 2008), Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies (Johns Hopkins UP, 2010) and Getting Inside Your Head: What Cognitive Science Can Tell Us About Popular Culture (Johns Hopkins UP, forthcoming in 2012).