The Secret Life of Literature

An innovative account that brings together cognitive science and literary history to examine patterns of "mindreading" in a range of literary works. In The Secret Life of Literature, Lisa Zunshine brings together cognitive science and literary history to trace patterns of "mindreading" in works ranging from The Epic of Gilgamesh to Invisible Man. Zunshine shows that novels, plays, and narrative poems continue to find new ways to make their readers engage in imaginative construction of mental states: their own, the characters,' the narrator's, and the author's. Crucially, these mental states-thoughts, feelings, and intentions-are "embedded" within each other. For instance, Ellison's Invisible Man is aware of how his white Party comrades pretend not to understand what he means, when they want to reassert their position of power. Race, class, and gender inform literary embedments, and so do unspoken cultural rules about the ethics of mindreading. Social situations involving complex embedments, Zunshine points out, occur in literature much more often than they do in everyday life. They are the cornerstone of literary imagination, and yet they are largely invisible to readers and critics. Zunshine examines specific patterns of mindreading, showing readers how to recognize them; explores the evolutionary and neurocognitive foundations of embedment; considers community-specific mindreading values; and looks at the migration of mindreading across genres and national literary traditions, paying particular attention to the use of deception, eavesdropping, and shame as plot devices. Finally, she investigates mindreading in children's literature.