@article{456503,
      recid = {456503},
      author = {Collins, Christopher.},
      title = {Paleopoetics : the evolution of the preliterate  imagination /},
      publisher = {Columbia University Press,},
      address = {New York :},
      pages = {xiv, 251 p. :},
      year = {2013},
      abstract = {"Christopher Collins introduces an exciting new field of  research traversing evolutionary biology, anthropology,  archaeology, cognitive psychology, linguistics,  neuroscience, and literary study. Paleopoetics maps the  selective processes that originally shaped the human genus  millions of years ago and prepared the human brain to play,  imagine, empathize, and engage in fictive thought as  mediated by language. A manifestation of the "cognitive  turn" in the humanities, Paleopoetics calls for a broader,  more integrated interpretation of the reading experience,  one that restores our connection to the ancient methods of  thought production still resonating within us.  Speaking  with authority on the scientific aspects of cognitive  poetics, Collins proposes reading literature using  cognitive skills that predate language and writing. These  include the brain's capacity to perceive the visible world,  store its images, and retrieve them later to form simulated  mental events. Long before humans could share stories  through speech, they perceived, remembered, and imagined  their own inner narratives. Drawing on a wide range of  evidence, Collins builds an evolutionary bridge between  humans' development of sensorimotor skills and their  achievement of linguistic cognition, bringing current  scientific perspective to such issues as the structure of  narrative, the distinction between metaphor and metonymy,  the relation of rhetoric to poetics, the relevance of  performance theory to reading, the difference between  orality and writing, and the nature of play and  imagination."--Publisher's website.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/456503},
}