Memory in Literature: From Rousseau to Neuroscience by S. Nalbantian

by Suzanne Nalbantian

This book is the first to discover and probe in depth memory phenomena captured in literary works. Using literature as a laboratory for the workings of the mind, this comparative study of writers from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Octavio Paz uncovers valuable material for the classification of the memory process. Such classification includes memory in its relation to emotions, the senses, environmental associations, the unconscious mind, and language. Suzanne Nalbantian brings scientific objectivity to literary criticism and, at the same time, offers scientists fresh data from literature about the workings of human memory. She discerns new connections between the intuitive expression of memory by literary subjects and neuroscientific theories about the encoding, storage, and retrieval of memory. This interdisciplinary work involving literature, science and art forges a new model for dialogue between the disciplines.

Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Suzanne Nalbantian is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Long Island University and an interdisciplinary scholar in the humanities and neuroscience. She holds the BA from Barnard College (’71) and the PhD from Columbia University (’75), and she is a permanent member of Columbia University’s Society of Fellows in the Humanities. At LIU, she has been the winner of the TASA Award for Lifetime Scholarly Achievement and the David Newton Award for Excellence in Teaching. Dr. Nalbantian is the author of four scholarly books and two edited volumes. She is the principal editor of The Memory Process: Neuroscientific and Humanistic Perspectives (MIT Press 2010). Her pioneering book Memory in Literature: From Rousseau to Neuroscience (Palgrave 2003) forged new pathways linking literary memory studies to neuroscience. She has lectured nationally and internationally on the interdisciplinary study of memory and has directed several conferences on that topic. Since 2012, she has been the Chair of the International Comparative Literature Association Research Committee on Literature and Neuroscience.

Reviews

[Víctor Bermúdez · Rating 5 out of 5]

List of Plates
Acknowledgements
Note on the Text
Introduction
1. Memory in the Era of Dynamic Psychology: Nineteenth-Century Backgrounds
2. Rousseau and the Romantics: Autobiographical Memory and Emotion
3. Baudelaire, Rimbauld, and Le Cerveau: Sensory Pathways to Memory
4. Proust and the Engram: The Trigger of the Senses
5. Woolf, Joyce and Faulkner: Associative Memory
6. Apollinaire, Breton, and the Surrealists: Automatism and Aleatory Memory
7. Nin, Borges and Paz: Labyrinthine Passageways of Mind and Language
8. The Almond and the Seahorse: Neuroscientific Queries
9. Afterword: Images of the Artists: Dali, Dominguez and Magritte
Bibliography
Index

[EvaLovesYA · Rating 3 out of 5]

En rigtig god kilde ifb. med et semesterfag på engelskstudiet.

- Brugt på universitetet (engelsk)

[Burcu]

Chapters:

1. Memory in the Era of Dynamic Psychology: Nineteenth-Century Backgrounds
2. Rousseau and the Romantics: Autobiographical Memory and Emotion
3. Baudelaire, Rimbauld, and Le Cerveau: Sensory Pathways to Memory
4. Proust and the Engram: The Trigger of the Senses
5. Woolf, Joyce and Faulkner: Associative Memory
6. Apollinaire, Breton, and the Surrealists: Automatism and Aleatory Memory
7. Nin, Borges and Paz: Labyrinthine Passageways of Mind and Language
8. The Almond and the Seahorse: Neuroscientific Queries
9. Afterword: Images of the Artists: Dali, Dominguez and Mag