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Reading the Mind: Cognitive Science and Close Reading

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Cognition, Mindreading, and Shakespeare's Characters

Part of the book series: Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance ((CSLP))

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Abstract

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 at a person or a literary character and contemplate what that person is thinking, feeling, and planning. Drawing particularly on the work of Simon Baron-Cohen and Alvin Goldman, Helms reviews contemporary cognitive science and the philosophy of mind to identify two methods of mindreading: inference (the theory-theory of mindreading) and imagination (the simulation theory of mindreading). Helms adds to this conversation by applying cognitive science to discussions of character in Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Bradley concludes that Macduff is most likely speaking of Malcolm’s childlessness rather than Macbeth’s. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy, 462.

  2. 2.

    Ibid., 316.

  3. 3.

    Ibid., 456.

  4. 4.

    Yachnin and Slights, Shakespeare and Character, 3.

  5. 5.

    Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy, 20.

  6. 6.

    Maus, Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance, 12.

  7. 7.

    Yachnin and Slights, Shakespeare and Character, 1.

  8. 8.

    Ibid., 3.

  9. 9.

    Ibid., 6–7.

  10. 10.

    Bristol, “How Dark Was It in That Room?”, 19–34.

  11. 11.

    Cook, Shakespearean Neuroplay.

  12. 12.

    Fahmi, “Quoting the Enemy.”

  13. 13.

    Lyne, Shakespeare, Rhetoric and Cognition.

  14. 14.

    McConachie, Engaging Audiences.

  15. 15.

    O’Dair, “On the Value of Being a Cartoon, in Literature and in Life,” 83.

  16. 16.

    Ibid., 86.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., 85.

  18. 18.

    Ibid., 91.

  19. 19.

    Ibid., 89.

  20. 20.

    Ponech, “The Reality of Fictive Cinematic Characters,” 52.

  21. 21.

    Bristol, “How Many Children Did She Have?”, 19.

  22. 22.

    Bristol, “Confusing Shakespeare’s Characters with Real People,” 38.

  23. 23.

    Morton, Frames of Mind.

  24. 24.

    For a defense of theory-theory based on developmental psychology, see Doherty, Theory of Mind: How Children Understand Others’ Thoughts and Feelings.

  25. 25.

    Hogan, Cognitive Science, Literature, and the Arts, 32.

  26. 26.

    Goldman, Simulating Minds, 10–13.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., 10.

  28. 28.

    Baron-Cohen, Mindblindness.

  29. 29.

    Gopnik, “How We Know Our Minds,” 1–14.

  30. 30.

    Goldman, Simulating Minds, 19.

  31. 31.

    Ibid., 20.

  32. 32.

    Jackson, “All That Can Be at Issue in the Theory-Theory Simulation Debate,” 77–96.

  33. 33.

    Goldman, Simulating Minds, 30.

  34. 34.

    “empathy, n.”; “sympathy, n.” OED.

  35. 35.

    Goldman, Simulating Minds, 4.

  36. 36.

    Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, 327.

  37. 37.

    “compassion, n.” 2.a. OED.

  38. 38.

    Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, 329.

  39. 39.

    Ibid., 333.

  40. 40.

    Ibid., 334.

  41. 41.

    Goldman, Simulating Minds, 43–45.

  42. 42.

    Zunshine, ed., Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies, 153.

  43. 43.

    Barr and Keysar, “Mindreading in an Exotic Case,” 271–83.

  44. 44.

    Goldman, Joint Ventures, 35.

  45. 45.

    Schoenfeldt, “Shakespearean Pain,” 198.

  46. 46.

    “cipher,” v., 3, 6. OED.

  47. 47.

    Jacobson, “The Elizabethan Cipher in Shakespeare’s Lucrece,” 348.

  48. 48.

    Arkin, “‘That Map Which Deep Impression Bears,’” 366.

  49. 49.

    Schoenfeldt, “Shakespearean Pain,” 195.

  50. 50.

    Or as Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo would say, the painter has failed to take “regarde of the concorde and discorde of the motions.” Lomazzo, A Tracte Containing the Artes of Curious Painting, 2.77.

  51. 51.

    Physiognomy is the study of, as Montaigne writes, “the conformity and relation of the body to the spirit.” Montaigne, The Complete Essays, III.12, 809.

  52. 52.

    Baines, “Effacing Rape in Early Modern Representation,” 89.

  53. 53.

    Belsey, “Tarquin Dispossessed,” 333.

  54. 54.

    “Crushed or broken in spirit by a sense of sin, and so brought to complete penitence.” “contrite,” adj., 2.a. OED.

  55. 55.

    Weaver, “‘O Teach Me How to Make Mine Own Excuse,’” 424.

  56. 56.

    Meek, “Ekphrasis in The Rape of Lucrece and The Winter’s Tale,” 391.

  57. 57.

    Ibid., 393–4.

  58. 58.

    Ibid., 406–7.

  59. 59.

    Meek, “‘O, What a Sympathy of Woe Is This,’” 296.

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  1. University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA

    Nicholas R. Helms

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Helms, N.R. (2019). Reading the Mind: Cognitive Science and Close Reading. In: Cognition, Mindreading, and Shakespeare's Characters. Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03565-5_2

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