Greek tragedy parades, tests, stimulates, and upends human cognition. Characters plot deception, try to fathom elusive gods, and fail to recognise loved ones. Spectators observe the characters' cognitive limitations and contemplate their own, grapple with moral quandaries and emotional breakdown, overlay mythical past and topical present, and all the while imagine that a man with a mask is Helen of Troy. With broad coverage of both plays and cognitive capabilities, Minds on Stage pursues a dual aim: to expand our understanding of Greek tragedy and to use Greek tragedy as a focal point for exploring cognitive thinking about literature.
After an introduction that considers questions of methodology, the volume is divided into three parts. Part One examines the dynamics of mind-reading by characters and audience, with articles on Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The chapters in Part Two study aspects of the characters' cognitive sense-making, from individual styles of attributing causes and different manners of remembering, to the use of objects as tools for thinking. Finally, Part Three turns to the cognitive dimension of spectating. The articles treat the spectators' generic expectations and different modes of engagement with the fictional worlds of the plays, the joint nature of their attention to the drama, the nexus between aesthetic illusion and the ethics of deception, as well as the situated nature of cognition that helps both audiences and characters make sense of morally complex situations.
Author(s): Felix Budelmann, Ineke Sluiter
Series: Cognitive Classics
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 281
City: Oxford
Cover
Minds on Stage: Greek Tragedy and Cognition
Copyright
Preface
Contents
List of Contributors
1. Introduction
1.1 Cognitive literary studies
1.2 Greek tragedy and cognition
1.3 Questions of methodology
1.3.1 Cognitive ‘theory’ and cognitive ‘science’: ideas or claims to firm knowledge?
1.3.2 Modes of variation: universality or cultural specificity?
1.3.3 The ‘what’ and the ‘how’: does cognitive criticism generate new readings?
1.3.4 Two-way traffic: can cognitive criticism give back to cognitive science?
1.4 The chapters
Acknowledgements
PART I. READING MINDS
2. Mindreading, Character, and Realism: The Case of Medea
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Reading real minds and/or minds on stage
2.3 Realism and character: the case of Medea
2.4 Medea’s multifarious mind
Acknowledgements
3. Reading the Mind of Ajax
3.1 Introduction
3.2 The challenge of Ajax’ ‘deception speech’
3.3 Internal readers of Ajax’ mind
3.4 Human minds in a divinely charged universe
3.5 Shifting mental states and the permanence of change
3.6 Conclusion: reading minds in Athenian tragedy
Acknowledgements
4. Space for Deliberation: Image Schemas, Metaphorical Reasoning, and the Dilemma of Pelasgus
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Literary criticism and cognitive poetics
4.3 Two models of metaphor comprehension
4.4 Metaphor and the mind of Pelasgus
4.5 Embodied experience and dramatic character
PART II. COGNITIVE WORK BY CHARACTERS
5. Attribution and Antigone
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Malle’s attribution theory
5.3 Antigone: cause or reason?
5.4 Antigone’s and Ismene’s attributions
5.5 Antigone’s valuing
5.6 Conclusion
6. ‘Remember to What Sort of Man You Give this Favour’: Looking Back on Sophocles’ Ajax
6.1 Introduction
6.2 The workings of memory
6.3 Memories of the living Ajax
6.4 Debating the memory of Ajax
6.5 Odysseus and the possibility of impartial memory
6.6 Conclusion: looking at memory through Ajax
7. Thinking Through Things: Extended Cognition as a Consolatory Fiction in Greek Tragedy
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Partnering with knowledgeable objects in the Oresteia?
7.2.1 The house of Agamemnon
7.2.2 Electra thinking through things
7.3 Anthropomorphic thinking and embodied memory in Euripides’ Heracles
7.4 Make-believe in drama: extended cognition as an ‘as-if’ fiction
7.4.1 Anthropomorphism as a cognitive reflex
7.5 Conclusion
Acknowledgements
PART III. PERFORMANCE, SPECTATING, AND COGNITION
8. Spectating Ancient Dramas: The Athenian Audience and its Emotional Response
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Theory of conceptual blending
8.3 Emotions of ancient audiences
8.4 Dynamic model of spectating
8.4.1 Interaction, contextualization, and separation
8.4.2 Affect and immersion
8.5 Emotions and conceptual blending theory
8.6 Conclusion
Acknowledgements
9. Gorgias’ ἀπάτη, Sophocles’ Electra, and Cognitive Criticism
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Gorgias fr. B 23 DK and cognitive approaches to aesthetic experience
9.3 An enactive reading of the false messenger speech in Electra
9.4 Aesthetic illusion and deceit, an uncanny entanglement
Acknowledgements
10. Seeing Together: Joint Attention in Attic Tragedy
10.1 Introduction
10.2 Sight invitations as speech acts and catalysts for joint attention
10.3 Capacious invitations and conflated addressees in Libation Bearers
10.4 Joint attention and joint knowledge in Women of Trachis
10.5 Dramatizing the limits of joint attention in Bacchae
10.6 Conclusion
Acknowledgements
11. Generic Expectations and the Interpretation of Attic Tragedy: Some Preliminary Questions and Cognitive Considerations
11.1 Introduction
11.2 Generic expectations in Attic tragedy
11.3 Disappointment of generic expectations: some case studies
11.4 Conclusion
Acknowledgements
12. Situated Cognition: Sophocles, Milgram, and the Disobedient Hero
12.1 Introduction
12.2 Neoptolemus in Sophocles’ Philoctetes: a hero under pressure
12.3 Milgram’s experiments in obedience to authority
12.4 Herbert Clark and the natural tendency to cooperate
12.5 Cooperation in the Philoctetes
12.6 The disobedient hero
12.7 Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Index Locorum
General Index
