Tag Archives: Literary Theory

The Classics, Guides to Our Best Selves

By Robin Bates | Published: January 12, 2012

Wayne Booth describes the classics as friends in the deepest and most productive sense of the word.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , | Comments closed

Lit’s Precondition: People All the Same

By Robin Bates | Published: February 15, 2011

I’ve just come across an illuminating contrast between literature and war.  Theater director Mary Zimmerman is currently staging a version of the Arabian Nights at Washington’s Arena Stage, and in the program notes she responds to the question, “Are you saying that you believe certain feelings are universal, or perhaps that we share an essential […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , | Comments closed

Neuro-Lit Riding to the Rescue?

By Robin Bates | Published: April 14, 2010

I wrote last Thursday about neuro-lit, which an article in the New York Times has trumpeted as English’s “best new thing.”  Certain practitioners are analyzing the way readers become absorbed in stories—fictional identification—by scanning their brains as they read.  Practitioners of this new approach are contending that fictional identification has played a key role in the […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments closed

Neuro-Lit: English’s “Next Big Thing”?

By Robin Bates | Published: April 8, 2010

A number of my friends have sent me the following New York Times article about the “next big thing in English”: neuro-lit.   Apparently fictionally identifying with story characters and plots is being studied from a brain point of view.  Researchers are looking at how many levels of abstraction the mind can hold (Virginia Woolf is credited […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments closed

Fish’s Claim that Lit is of No Use

By Robin Bates | Published: October 12, 2009

Stanley Fish    Last week I was talking to my colleague in philosophy Alan Paskow about a Stanley Fish New York Times column. (Cancer update: Alan had one of the five tumors in his lungs removed two weeks ago through cyberknife surgery.) Although an old post—last January—it had stuck with us because it contradicts so […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments closed