Uncovering fictional minds: Theory of mind, embodied cognition and social thinking in twentieth-century Spain
Abstract
My dissertation is an interdisciplinary study that connects cognitive psychology to literature in order to show that the same approaches to understand the human mind apply to understanding fictional minds. Both fields, uniting the sciences with the humanities, strive to understand what it means to be human and how we function in our greater environment. The difference is that cognitive psychology conducts experiments and analyzes the outcomes, and the study of literature approaches the artistic creations as products of the mind. As I bring them together, I will show that as we read we bring the characters to life, just as when we imagine anyone we meet in our daily life when they are physically absent. As a result, the way that characters interact substantiates and illustrates the scientific findings and expands our understanding of how we know ourselves, how we communicate with others, what role emotion and empathy plays, and what role fiction plays in our real-life context. Because we, at least partially, bring literature to life in our imagination as we read, we should recognize the role of cognitive psychology and the mind in any approach to fiction.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Mancing, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Romance literature|Cognitive psychology
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