Print Price: $21.95

Format:
Paperback
208 pp.
1 line illus., 201 mm x 135 mm

ISBN-13:
9780195126679

Publication date:
September 1998

Imprint: OUP US

The Literary Mind

The Origins of Thought and Language

Mark Turner

We usually consider literary thinking to be peripheral and dispensable, an activity for specialists: poets, prophets, lunatics, and babysitters. Certainly we do not think it is the basis of the mind. We think of stories and parables from Aesop's Fables or The Thousand and One Nights, for example, as exotic tales set in strange lands, with spectacular images, talking animals, and fantastic plots--wonderful entertainments, often insightful, but well removed from logic and science, and entirely foreign to the world of everyday thought. But Mark Turner argues that this common wisdom is wrong. The literary mind--the mind of stories and parables--is not peripheral but basic to thought. Story is the central principle of our experience and knowledge. Parable--the projection of story to give meaning to new encounters--is the indispensable tool of everyday reason. Literary thought makes everyday thought possible. This book makes the revolutionary claim that the basic issue for cognitive science is the nature of literary thinking.
In The Literary Mind, Turner ranges from the tools of modern linguistics, to the recent work of neuroscientists such as Antonio Damasio and Gerald Edelman, to literary masterpieces by Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Proust, as he explains how story and projection--and their powerful combination in parable--are fundamental to everyday thought. In simple and traditional English, he reveals how we use parable to understand space and time, to grasp what it means to be located in space and time, and to conceive of ourselves, other selves, other lives, and other viewpoints. He explains the role of parable in reasoning, in categorizing, and in solving problems. He develops a powerful model of conceptual construction and, in a far-reaching final chapter, extends it to a new conception of the origin of language that contradicts proposals by such thinkers as Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker. Turner argues that story, projection, and parable precede grammar, that language follows from these mental capacities as a consequence. Language, he concludes, is the child of the literary mind.
Offering major revisions to our understanding of thought, conceptual activity, and the origin and nature of language, The Literary Mind presents a unified theory of central problems in cognitive science, linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy. It gives new and unexpected answers to classic questions about knowledge, creativity, understanding, reason, and invention.

Reviews

• "An incredibly rich overview of Turner's newest ideas, offering scholars in both the humanities and cognitive sciences an excellent tutorial on the literary mind."--Raymond Gibbs, Jr., Professor of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz
• "Outstanding. This book will be a marvelous way for people to get into cognitive science."--Suzanne E. Kemmer, Professor of Linguistics, Rice University
• "Turner's forceful book starts by showing how we use storying and metaphor to understand everything from pouring a cup of coffee to Proust. It ends with the splendidly bold claim that this storying, literary mind comes first, before all other kinds of thought, even language itself. Adventurous and convincing, Turner's work launches a new understanding, not only of literature, but of what it is to have a human brain. To read it is to think about thinking in a way you never have."--Norman N. Holland, Marston-Milbauer Professor of English, University of Florida
• "A garden of many delights to be enjoyed by literary and scientific minds? An elegant bridge between two worlds? Other mixed (blended) metaphors apply to this book provided they tell the reader that this is an intelligent text, equally valuable to literary scholars and cognitive scientists."--Antonio R. Damasio, Professor of Neurology, University of Iowa, and author of Descartes' Error
• Review of THE LITERARY MIND: "A startling philosophical investigation of the central role story plays in human cognition. With resort to the tools of modern linguistics, to the fascinating work of neuroscientists such as Gerald Edelman, to the literary inventions of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Proust, Mark Turner, co author of the instructive study of classic prose style, Clear and Simple as the Truth, examines how story, projection, and parable "make everyday life possible." . . . This is a challenging but rewarding book, filled with seminal concepts that will ramify throughout your understanding of consciousness, thought, literature, and the origin and nature of language." James Mustich, Jr., A Common Reader (January 1997, page 75).
• "A lucid and engaging introduction to a complex field nobody can afford to ignore."--Discover Magazine
• "By blending neuroscience and literary history in The Literary Mind, Turner has created a story of his own, certain to set billions of neurons firing....Audacious and remarkable book. "--Toronto Globe and Mail
• "A deeply thoughtful meditation."--Choice
• "A very rewarding and tightly argued book. The analyses are ingenious and well-founded. Turner's work must be highly recommended. . . . What Turner has achieved is important to the study of literature. Indeed, on the present North American scene it seems to be one of the most promising approaches." - Jørgen Dines Johansen, The Semiotic Review of Books
• "Bringing together so much from literature, folklore, linguistics, philosophy, and even neuroscience, The Literary Mind offers a boldly unified view of thinking. Because it posits the experience of telling and listening to stories rather than the hidden substructure of grammar as the basis for homo linguistics, it will be controversial. Nevertheless, Turner argues his case with brilliance and tenacity. I for one am convinced."--Dennis Dutton, Philosophy and Literature
• "Written in a crystal-clear style, Turner's book is a triumph of objective literary studies and an example of intelligence, open-mindedness, and intellectual courage."--Thomas Pavel (University of Chicago) Modern Philology