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Engaging the World: Writing, Imagination, and Enactivism
- Philosophy and Literature
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 41, Number 1, April 2017
- pp. 45-54
- 10.1353/phl.2017.0003
- Article
- Additional Information
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Abstract:
Writing is not purely cerebral; it reaches out beyond the brain to engage the world. Two kinds of world-engaging processes are discussed here: a dynamic loop involving writing, reading, and writing again, and a second dynamic loop involving writing, reading to an audience, receiving feedback, and writing again. Several writers, including Flaubert and Nabokov, have discerned these loops, which have also been explored experimentally. I close by discussing the role that active engagement with the world plays in imagination.