Schedule / Horaire
Thursday 24 April 2014, 15h30-17h30.
Room: V106A.
Leaders / Organisatrices
Anja Müller-Wood and Sibylle Baumbach, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz (Germany)
Participants
- Elisa Bertinato, Tor Vergata University, Rome (Italy)
Interpreting space, movement and power in Measure for Measure - Michael Booth, Brandeis University/Harvard University (USA)
Shakespeare, Stories and Conceptual Blending - Joachim Frenk, Universität des Saarlandes (Germany)
Falstaff’s Self-Serving Rhetoric - N.R. Helms, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa (USA)
Collaborative Cognition: Communicating with Madness in The Two Noble Kinsmen - Lalita Pandit Hogan, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (USA)
“… breaking of so great a thing should make a greater crack”: Cognitive Unconscious, Rasa, and Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra - Patrick Colm Hogan, University of Connecticut (USA)
My Othello Problem: Cognition and Aesthetic Response - Raphael Lyne, University of Cambridge (UK)
Shakespeare and Social Cognition - Felix Sprang, Universität Hamburg (Germany)
“Where think’st thou he is now?” The Extension of Rhetoric into Cognition in Shakespeare’s Antony & Cleopatra
Abstracts / Résumés
1. Elisa Bertinato, Tor Vergata University, Rome (Italy)
Interpreting space, movement and power in Measure for Measure
This paper draws on Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Conceptual Blending Theory to interpret place and movement of characters in Shakespeare’s problem play Measure for Measure, arguing that although some locations in the play are not well specified, those which are become meaningful at different levels of interpretation. Using CMT and CBT I will analyse how places and movements are conceptualized in individual speeches and in dialogues, what feelings combine with specific movements or immobility states and how these are conveyed linguistically and to which extent the web of movements within the play is relevant to the play’s representation of power.
2. Michael Booth, Brandeis University/Harvard University (USA)
Shakespeare, Stories and Conceptual Blending
This paper considers Shakespeare’s economies of design and expression and explores the relationship, in his storytelling, between coherence and complexity. Complex stories like his please us by weaving together events into one kind of system (logical, causal), weaving different perspectives into another kind of system (intersubjective), and weaving the two kinds of system neatly into one. The consummate storyteller makes these elements dovetail, and the playwright makes an audience experience a story’s causal logic and interpersonal emotional entailments in real time, infusing an hour or two with the steadily growing aesthetic richness of a single, coherent cognitive experience.
3. Joachim Frenk, Universität des Saarlandes (Germany)
Falstaff’s Self-Serving Rhetoric
Sir John Falstaff seems well-nigh indestructible before his offstage death reported by the Hostess in Henry V. Resembling folklore figures like the king of carnival and the Vice, Falstaff is interested in nothing but his own well-being, i.e., the preservation of his copious self. This is also evident in the rhetoric he uses, which documents his key strategies of survival: In the histories, from his first awakening on stage until his last address of the Lord Chief Justice, and in The Merry Wives of Windsor from his first boisterous appearance to his inclusion in the final tableau of bourgeois harmony.
4. N.R. Helms, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa (USA)
Collaborative Cognition: Communicating with Madness in The Two Noble Kinsmen
Shakespeare and Fletcher’s portrayal of the Jailer’s Daughter reveals the frustration of communication between the mad and the sane, yet at the same time it offers an alternative: theatrical play, crediting another’s beliefs in order to begin a conversation. This theatrical play is a merger of inference and imagination, for it requires both a theory of how the mad person thinks—knowledge of the Jailer’s Daughter’s delusions—and the willingness to imaginatively inhabit an off-center, unsettled perspective. Thus, Two Noble Kinsmen suggests the usefulness of cooperation—or collaboration, if you will—between different methods for understanding the minds of others.
5. Lalita Pandit Hogan, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (USA)
“… breaking of so great a thing should make a greater crack”: Cognitive Unconscious, Rasa, and Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra
Octavius Caesar’s observation on Antony’s death is a self-referential comment. Eliciting no great investment in the fates of the protagonists, the play is neither a romantic nor a heroic tragedy; its design is anchored solely in emotions ancillary to romantic passion and heroic ambition and organized around junctures, deviations and deferrals. I will explore how schema deviance (a concept from Cognitive Poetics) works in the play, draw on Sanskrit Poetics for a theory of junctures, or plot sandhis (referring to moments of reflection and doubt) to reexamine its epistemic logos, and ultimately tie it to LeDoux’s notion of cognitive unconscious.
6. Patrick Colm Hogan, University of Connecticut (USA)
My Othello Problem: Cognition and Aesthetic Response
Bardolatry has been a topic of analysis and debate among Shakespeare scholars for many years. However, no one seems to have systematically considered the cognitive and affective consequences of Shakespeare’s reputation for individual aesthetic response. In this essay, I consider a specific case of this “bardolatry effect”, my own (long-denied) problem with the ending of Othello. The purpose of the analysis is two-fold. First, it aims to explore the cognitive and emotional effects of social norms on individual aesthetic response. Second, it considers the consequences of these effects for our broader, social understanding and appreciation of literary texts.
7. Raphael Lyne, University of Cambridge (UK)
Shakespeare and Social Cognition
One of the key aspects of human social cognition is the ability to see through other eyes (literally and metaphorically). This ability is frequently at issue in Shakespeare’s plays, where we are confronted with many strange fictional minds, but also rely on them to tell us what the world looks like. I will argue that we should see certain scenes as experiments in social cognition that rely on an embedded theory of how our minds work together; and I will base this partly in comparison with the very different experiments and theories conducted by other dramatists (Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher).
8. Felix Sprang, Universität Hamburg (Germany)
“Where think’st thou he is now?” The Extension of Rhetoric into Cognition in Shakespeare’s Antony & Cleopatra
When we think of cognition in Shakespeare we often think of bringing neuroscience to the plays (cf. Cook, 2011). It is equally fascinating to think of cognition in Shakespeare as an extension of classical rhetoric. Following Helen Vendler’s observation (1997: 168) that Shakespeare “respects the fluidity of mental processes (exemplified in lexical and syntactic concatenation)”, I will discuss how Antony and Cleopatra engages with mnemonic techniques, methods of loci, rhetorical inventio and elocutio. Antony’s struggle to break his “strong Egyptian fetters” (1.2.105) can help us rethink the relevance of early modern rhetoric, in particular rhetorical mind games, for cognitive processes.