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Neurocognitive Interpretations of Australian Literature; Criticism In i “Jean- François Vernay makes the case in this book for a turn to cogni- tive Australian literary studies, both in Australian novels themselves and in the emergence of a ‘synergistic field of cognitive-inspired Australian literary scholarship.’ These are new, provocative ideas which offer unex- pected ways of reading a wide range of Australian fiction from Markus Zusak to Frank Moorhouse, from Claire Coleman to Christos Tsiolkas, from Linda Jaivin to Helen Demidenko. The analyses are fully alert to the scopic and haptic pleasures books can provide, the effects of the ‘neurodiversity paradigm,’ the cognitive mechanisms generated by erotic themes, the interaction between mind and body in Indigenous fiction, the representation of rage in the works of ‘angry gay’ writers, and the major public controversy caused by Demidenko’s novel.” David Carter, Emeritus Professor, FAHA, The University of Queensland, Australia. “The understanding of what we humans get up to with each other, as members of our species and our cultures, has been the principal aspir- ation of both cognitive psychology and literary studies. Until very recently, however, these two disciplines have stayed rather far apart. In this timely monograph, Jean- François Vernay describes how they are at last approaching each other in mutually beneficial ways. This book shows how fiction and imagination are together coming into the center of the neurocognitive enterprise.” Keith Oatley, Author of Our Minds, Our Selves: A Brief History of Psychology. ii iii Neurocognitive Interpretations of Australian Literature This unique book on neurocognitive interpretations of Australian literature covers a wide range of analyses by discussing Australian Literary Studies, Aboriginal literary texts, women writers, ethnic writing, bestsellers, neurodivergence fiction, emerging as well as high- profile writers, literary hoaxes and controversies, book culture, and LGBTIQA+ authors, to name a few. It eclectically brings together a wide gamut of cognitive concepts and literary genres at the intersection of Australian literary studies and cognitive literary studies in the first single- author volume of its kind. It takes Australian Literary Studies into the age of neuroawareness and provides new pathways in contem- porary criticism. Jean- François Vernay is the author of five scholarly books, most of which are available in translation or are currently being translated: Water from the Moon: Illusion and Reality in the Works of Australian Novelist Christopher Koch (2007), A Brief Take on the Australian Novel (2016), The Seduction of Fiction: A Plea for Putting Emotions Back into Literary Interpretation (2016), and: La séduction de la fiction (2019). He has also edited several special issues of international academic journals and his 30 odd peer- reviewed articles and chapters have appeared in many countries around the world. His latest monograph, The Rise of the Australian Neurohumanities: Conversations between Neurocognitive Research and Australian Literature, is an edited volume also available in the Routledge Focus series. iv Routledge Focus on Literature Neo- Georgian Fiction Re- imagining the Eighteenth Century in the Contemporary Historical Novel Edited by Jakub Lipski and Joanna Maciulewicz Introduction to Digital Humanities Enhancing Scholarship with the Use of Technology Kathryn C. Wymer Geomythology How Common Stories are Related to Earth Events Timothy J. Burbery Re- Reading the Eighteenth- Century Novel Studies in Reception Jakub Lipski Trump and Autobiography Corporate Culture, Political Rhetoric, and Interpretation Nicholas K. Mohlmann Biofictions Literary and Visual Imagination in the Age of Biotechnology Lejla Kucukalic Neurocognitive Interpretations of Australian Literature Criticism in the Age of Neuroawareness Jean- François Vernay For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge. com/ Routledge- Focus- on- Literature/ book- series/ RFLT v Neurocognitive Interpretations of Australian Literature Criticism in the Age of Neuroawareness Jean- François Vernay vi First published 2022 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Jean- François Vernay The right of Jean- François Vernay to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Vernay, Jean- François, author. Title: Neurocognitive interpretations of Australian literature: criticism in the age of neuroawareness / Jean- François Vernay. Description: New York: Routledge, 2021. | Series: Routledge focus on literature | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This book eclectically brings together a wide gamut of cognitive concepts and literary genres at the intersection of Australian literary studies and cognitive literary studies in the first single- author volume of its kind”– Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2021014491 | ISBN 9780367751982 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032078533 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003161455 (ebook) DOI: 10.4324/ 9781003161455 Subjects: LCSH: Australian literature–History and criticism. | Australian literature– Psychological aspects. | Philosophy of mind in literature. | LCGFT: Literary criticism Classification: LCC PR9604.6 V47 2021 | DDC 820.9/ 994–dc23 LC record available at https:// lccn.loc.gov/ 2021014491 ISBN: 978-0-367-75198-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-03-207853-3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-00-316145-5 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/ 9781003161455 Typeset in Times New Roman by Newgen Publishing UK vii Contents Foreword by Tony Hughes- d’Aeth ix Acknowledgments xii Introduction: Going the Extra Scholarly Mile xiii PART I Cognition and Literary Culture 1 1 Up for a Cha(lle)nge? A Case for Cognitive Australian Literary Studies 3 2 Do Judge a Book by Its Cover! Attraction and Attachment in Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief 18 PART II Cognition and the Mind 33 3 Gazing Inward and Outward: (Trans)Formation in C.J. Koch’s Bildungsroman Protagonists and Readers 35 4 Australian High- Functioning ASD Fiction in the Age of Neurodiversity: Graeme Simsion’s Rosie Trilogy 49 viii viii Contents PART III Cognition and the Body 65 5 The Erotics of Writing and Reading Australian Fiction: Linda Jaivin, Frank Moorhouse, and John Purcell’s Art of Dealing with Dirt 67 6 Brains in Pain and Coping Bodies: Trauma, Scars, Wounds, and the Mind– Body Relationship in Western Australia Aboriginal Literature 81 PART IV Cognition and Emotions 93 7 Angry Gay Men: Rage, Race, and Reward in Contemporary Australian Advocacy Fiction 95 8 No Time for Outrage? The Demidenko Affair: Literary Representations, Criticism, and Moral Emotions in The Hand That Signed the Paper 112 Selective Bibliography 128 Index 133 ix Foreword The approach that is taken by Jean- François Vernay in Neurocognitive Interpretations of Australian Literature: Criticism in the Age of Neuroawareness represents a new and original reading of Australian lit- erature. Bringing to bear the polemics of neurohumanities, this book defamiliarizes the topography of Ozlit from grunge literature to the Demidenko affair, and from the coming-of- age novels of Christopher Koch to the Indigenous futurism of Claire G. Coleman. There are two main ways in which Vernay’s book offers neuroawareness as a source for critical insight. The first is to concep- tualize the text as instigating affective responses. That books produce emotions is neither novel nor contentious, but in this book emotions are grounded as neural events. The other claim in this book is that a neuroaware criticism makes visible neurodiversity as a particular form of human difference. In earlier epochs, these were differences that might have been captured, however imperfectly, by the concept of character. Broadly speaking, neuroawareness finds in the phenomenology traced by cognitive psychology a new typology of character. According to this approach, a significant dimension of human diversity can be located in the cognitive qualities that differentiate, to take a significant example, the autism spectrum. In Vernay’s chapter on bildungsroman as a modality in the early novels of Christopher Koch, we encounter a concept (i.e., bildung) that is dis- tinctly modern, and which cuts across the ancient ascription of diffe- rence to character. The shift signaled by the bildungsroman is to take the idea of character away from a gallery of human types, and to posit it as something that could grow. But for Vernay, the bildungsroman is nei- ther an account of sociocultural adjustment, nor a repetition of decisive scenic moments in the psyche, but a dramatization of early brain plasti- city and, even more daringly, a mechanism for reawakening this founda- tional plasticity. To state this in bald terms, for Vernay and the branch x x Foreword of criticism that he is advocating and modelling in this book: reading alters the brain, even
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