In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature ed. by Isabel Jaén and Julien J. Simon
  • Luis F. López González
Jaén, Isabel, and Simon, Julien J., eds. Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016. Pp. 240. ISBN 978-0-19025-657-9.

Cognitive literary studies represent an interdisciplinary effort to create a conduit through which the humanities and the sciences may communicate and share ideas and methodologies with the purpose of establishing new connections and discourses between diverse disciplines. Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature aims to consolidate and diversify the epistemological field of cognitive literary studies. Editors Isabel Jaén and Julien J. Simon bring together an array of eleven academic studies that exemplify the multiplicity of discourses conflating in the dynamic multidisciplinary field, in which "Embodiment" and "Theory of Mind" are the two primary lines of inquiry. This monograph primarily seeks to explore the way in which a blend of cognitive theories can facilitate "our understanding of the relationship between the mind and the arts" in early modern Spain (5).

Jaén and Simon divide the book into five sections, each covering a specific branch of cognitive studies. The first section offers an outline of the epistemology of cognitive approaches to early modern Spanish literature. Simon's "Introduction" offers a theoretical framework and [End Page 149] expounds the historical backdrop of the studies in order to understand how cognitive embodiment helps the reader navigate through early modern texts. Three studies comprise section two. In the first study, Howard Mancing explores the ways in which the reader interacts with fictional characters as embodied human beings. Mancing analyzes the battle between Don Quijote and the Basque squire, and he concludes that readers cannot read Don Quixote without understanding "the embodied realities of the characters" (42). Mancing applies Maturana and Varela's neurobiological concept of autopoiesis (self-creation) and argues that Don Quijote creates himself as a knight-errant. The process of becoming "Don Quijote" is fraught with a series of difficulties because he has to "couple" with his imagined world of knight-errands, princesses, and wizards. Katherine Connor-Swietlicki offers an analysis of the current state of autopoietic research and neuroscience updates, as well as an analysis of Cervantes's artfully crafted literary debate between the "armas y las letras." The first part has intrinsic scientific and literary values, but it also serves as the theoretical framework from which she fashions a forceful interpretation of Don Quijote's poetic insight of arms and letters. Julia Domínguez closes the second section with a study about the role of memory and imagination in Don Quijote's (mis-)perception of his "real" world. Domínguez's thesis is that the interplay between memory and imagination is central in Cervantes's novel, and she supports her argument by deploying the Janus Hypothesis, which contends that the mind has the capacity of recording the past while imagining the future (75). Don Quijote resorts to memories collected through his readings, and these memories allow him to imagine future scenarios.

Section three deals with "Embodied Cognition and Performance," which contains the studies of Bruce R. Burningham and Elizabeth M. Cruz Petersen. Bruningham opens the section by calling into question the pre-established notion that the Spanish Middle Ages did not have dramatic texts, written to be staged to the public. Burningham revisits his book Radical Theatricality, which argues that a theatrical performance does not depend solely on the plurality of actors. Performances do not need to take place on an "architectural stage" to be considered "theatrical." Instead, the essence of theater "is simply one person watching one person do something interesting" (94). Elizabeth M. Cruz Petersen explores the dynamics of shared spaces in corrales in the context of embodied spectatorship. Using Richard Shusterman's theory of pragmatic somaesthetics, Cruz Petersen argues that early Spanish theatergoers played an active role in the way they experienced theater: "Spectators exercised an embodied aesthetics by merging their own experiences with representational forms" (114). Rather than passive viewers, spectators played an active role in the spatial and interpersonal configuration of the playhouse. The response of the people, which was affected by...

pdf

Share