ISI Library

Other title information: George Herbert’s Poetry as Cognitive Behaviour

Annotation: This book provides a cognitive analysis of the poetry of George Herbert (1593- 1633). From Herbert’s own thinking, recorded in his prose treatises, can be deduced that his poems should serve a specific function: teaching self-knowledge to his readers. Self-knowledge is a necessary skill, to be applied in one’s strife for ‘temperance’: the regulation of body, house, church, mind, and community. To Herbert, the meaning of his poems is subservient to this function: poetry should aid his readers to temper their lives. The cognitive framework applied here can serve to explain this function. Following Merlin Donald’s theory of cognitive evolution, art serves the purpose of mimetic meta-cognition: a specific cognitive strategy at the disposal of a county priest. Moreover, a cognitive framework can serve to explain why the Herbert-tradition has paid so little attention to this artistic function; this tradition operates within specific confines, the same confines that Herbert sought to compensate with his poetry and his thinking.

Identifier: 9783034313780

Status: Available

Other title information: To Empirical Dimension

Annotation: The research reported here lays the groundwork for further empirical investigations of reader response. It also provides new insights into how worlds and structures relate to and reproduce our inner and outer space, how the choice of text and critical approach can predetermine responses, and how interpretation depends in part on the cultural forces we reflect and reproduce. This volume does not present a more or less random sample of texts and studies dealing with reader response. Rather, the writers were selected because of their empirical expertise, and because they approached the study of reader response from a perspective which would provide possible answers as to the nature and pattern of reader response to literature.

Identifier: 3110127644

Status: Available