✨ Featured Offer
Brand New
$43.94
List Price: $32.00
🚚
See all 5 offers from $21.28 FREE standard delivery by: 30 Mar 2026
Overview
Christopher Collins introduces an exciting new field of research traversing evolutionary biology, anthropology, archaeology, cognitive psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and literary study. Paleopoetics maps the selective processes that originally shaped the human genus millions of years ago and prepared the human brain to play, imagine, empathize, and engage in fictive thought as mediated by language. A manifestation of the "cognitive turn" in the humanities, Paleopoetics calls for a broader, more integrated interpretation of the reading experience, one that restores our connection to the ancient methods of thought production still resonating within us.
Speaking with authority on the scientific aspects of cognitive poetics, Collins proposes reading literature using cognitive skills that predate language and writing. These include the brain's capacity to perceive the visible world, store its images, and retrieve them later to form simulated mental events. Long before humans could share stories through speech, they perceived, remembered, and imagined their own inner narratives. Drawing on a wide range of evidence, Collins builds an evolutionary bridge between humans' development of sensorimotor skills and their achievement of linguistic cognition, bringing current scientific perspective to such issues as the structure of narrative, the distinction between metaphor and metonymy, the relation of rhetoric to poetics, the relevance of performance theory to reading, the difference between orality and writing, and the nature of play and imagination.
Speaking with authority on the scientific aspects of cognitive poetics, Collins proposes reading literature using cognitive skills that predate language and writing. These include the brain's capacity to perceive the visible world, store its images, and retrieve them later to form simulated mental events. Long before humans could share stories through speech, they perceived, remembered, and imagined their own inner narratives. Drawing on a wide range of evidence, Collins builds an evolutionary bridge between humans' development of sensorimotor skills and their achievement of linguistic cognition, bringing current scientific perspective to such issues as the structure of narrative, the distinction between metaphor and metonymy, the relation of rhetoric to poetics, the relevance of performance theory to reading, the difference between orality and writing, and the nature of play and imagination.
| ISBN-13 | 9780231160933 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0231160933 |
| Weight | 0.80 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 5.60 x 0.70 x 8.70 In |
| List Price | $32.00 |
| Edition | 1st Edition |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Pages | 272 pages |
| Publisher | Columbia University Press |
| Published On | 2014-11-04 |
View All Offers
Sort by:
Price
Condition
Seller
Seller Comments
Price
Used, Very Good
Seller details
HPB-Diamond
Dallas, TX, USA
Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and ...
Free delivery by: 30 Mar 2026
Used, Like New
Seller details
GreatBookPrices-
Columbia, MD, USA
100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition. We offer expedited shipping to all US locat...
Free delivery by: 30 Mar 2026
✨ Brand New
Seller details
GreatBookPrices-
Columbia, MD, USA
100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition. We offer expedited shipping to all US locat...
Free delivery by: 30 Mar 2026
Brand New
Seller details
Alibris
Sparks, NV, USA
Print on demand Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 272 p. Contains: Unspecified, Illustrations, b...
Free delivery by: 30 Mar 2026
Used, Good
Seller details
Bonita
Santa Clarita, CA, USA
Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items. May be an ex-library book.
Free delivery by: 30 Mar 2026