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The aim of the volume is to show in which sense the study of culture, literature and the arts can contribute to a better understanding of human cognition. The collection of essays is questioning whether culture is exclusively human and discusses evolutionary substrates of narrative and the interfaces between culture, stories and cognition. The contributions examine the cognitive strengths and weaknesses of literary reading and analyse other techniques of sense-making in the arts through imagined dialogues and the experience of ambiguity. The final contributions are dealing with musical cognition, the relation between music, aesthetics and cognition.
List of contents
Is culture exclusively human? (Alexandre Castro Caldas) - On the evolutionary substrates of narrative (Katja Mellmann) - To read and why to read: Interfaces between culture, stories and cognition (Vera Nünning) - Why there is no such thing as a «Superreader»: On the cognitive strengths and weaknesses of literary reading (Susanne Reichl) - Telling vs. showing. Imagined dialogues, the conversation frame, and sense-making in the arts (Ana Margarida Abrantes) - The uncanny, the brain and the pleasure of ambiguity (Peter Hanenberg) - Weather Reports: Discourse and musical cognition (Per Aage Brandt) - Music, aesthetics and cognition: «Musical Prose» in the Fin de siècle (Elisheva Rigbi)
About the author
Peter Hanenberg is a Professor for German and Culture Studies at Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Lisbon, vice rector for research and innovation and director of CADOS, Católica Doctoral School. He coordinates the research group on cognition and translatability at the Research Centre for Communication and Culture in Lisbon. His research focuses on the literary representation of the idea of Europe and on the intersection of cognition and culture.
Wolfgang Hallet is a former Professor of Teaching English as a Foreign Language at Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany. He was a founding member of the Executive Board of the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture and the Head of its Teaching Centre. In literary studies he has researched and published on contemporary novels, the spatial turn, the multimodal novel, and methodologies of intermediality and multimodality.
