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Cognition, Mindreading, and Shakespeare's Characters

Part of the Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance Book Series

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-03565-5

ISBN: 978-3-030-03564-8

Publisher: Springer International Publishing - Springer Journals

Jan 17, 2019

LitStream

Chapter 1The Mind’s Construction: An Introduction to Mindreading in Shakespeare

Helms, Nicholas R.

Pages: 1 –15

[Helms presents cognitive theories of mindreading as a set of tools with which literary critics can analyze Shakespeare’s characters. Mindreading is the human ability to attribute mental states to others: emotions, beliefs, and plans of action. Beginning with “the art to find the mind’s...
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Chapter 2Reading the Mind: Cognitive Science and Close Reading

Helms, Nicholas R.

Pages: 17 –43

[Helms enters the debate about the usefulness of character criticism, joining critics such as Michael Bristol, Jessica Slights, and Paul Yachnin in arguing for a criticism that considers characters as if they were real people living in recognizable worlds. Mindreading is the human ability to look...
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Chapter 3Inferring the Mind: Parasites and the Breakdown of Inference in Othello

Helms, Nicholas R.

Pages: 45 –80

[Helms focuses on inference in Shakespeare’s Othello, analyzing the ways Iago uses inference to understand others and to mask his own mental states, also known as levels of intentionality. Inference is a powerful tool for predicting human behavior based upon general principles, but as those...
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Chapter 4Imagining the Mind: Empathy and Misreading in Much Ado About Nothing

Helms, Nicholas R.

Pages: 81 –113

[Using Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, Helms describes how imagination breaks down in complex social situations where multiple individual perspectives must be imagined simultaneously. To circumvent this difficulty, characters rely on the empathic connection they have with others, and...
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Chapter 5Integrating Minds: Blending Methods in The King Is Alive and Twelfth Night

Helms, Nicholas R.

Pages: 115 –142

[Through Levring and Jensen’s The King Is Alive and Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Helms discuss two ways to integrate inference and imagination. The King Is Alive—an appropriation of King Lear—exemplifies a story where inference frames strongly imaginative character building. Twelfth Night...
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Chapter 6Finding the Frame: Inference in Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet

Helms, Nicholas R.

Pages: 143 –173

[Karsten Stueber has argued that inferences can frame acts of imagination, the two methods working in concert to enable mindreading. For Shakespeare’s plays focused on decay—Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet—the early modern theory of spontaneous generation is an important frame for...
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Chapter 7Reading Incoherence: How Shakespeare Speaks Back to Cognitive Science

Helms, Nicholas R.

Pages: 175 –210

[Helms argues that Shakespeare’s plays enable a balance of inference and imagination that lets readers contemplate states of mind outside the neurotypical realm of experience, such as early modern madness. Contemporary cognitive science has shown difficulty conceptualizing non-normative modes of...
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Chapter 8Mindreading as Engagement: Active Spectators and “The Strangers’ Case”

Helms, Nicholas R.

Pages: 211 –223

[Helms argues that mindreading is an engaged process for readers and spectators, for they risk becoming implicated in the creation of characters. While much mindreading can occur automatically and unconsciously, both inference and imagination draw upon the mindreader’s own knowledge and...

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