title: The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language
author:  Mark Turner 
description: Turner, a professor of English with a passion for cognitive studies, proposes new and intriguing interpretations of the workings of the mind and the evolution of language and grammar. "The literary mind is the fundamental mind," he states, then launches into a complex explanation of how thoughts take the form of stories, or parables, and how parables are the vehicle for comprehension and organization of experiences. Turner illustrates his definition of the parable--stories with an associative purpose--as the most basic habit of mind in discussions of the tales of Shahrazad and the novels of Proust, but he also dissects such subtle properties of parable as its illumination of space and time. He concludes by rejecting the notion of grammar's being inherent in the genetic code, as theorized by Noam Chomsky, and declares, instead, that parable is the wellspring of grammar. Recommended where literary theory has an audience. <i>Donna Seaman</i>
zlib_text: Edited by
  Mark J. Bruhn and Donald R. Wehrs
  ROUTLEDGE INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES 
  ON LITERATURE
  Cognition, Literature, and History
  
  Cognition, Literature, and History
  Cognition, Literature, and History models the ways in which cognitive and 
  literary studies may collaborate and thereby mutually advance. It shows how 
  understanding of underlying structures of mind can productively inform 
  literary analysis and historical inquiry, and how formal and historical anal-
  ysis of distinctive literary works can reciprocally enrich our understanding 
  of those underlying structures. Applying the cognitive neuroscience of cate-
  gorization, emotion, ﬁ gurative thinking, narrativity, self-awareness, theory 
  of mind, and wayﬁ nding to the study of literary works and genres from 
  diverse historical periods and cultures, the authors argue that literary expe-
  rience proceeds from, qualitatively heightens, and selectively informs and 
  even reforms our evolved and embodied capacities for thought and f