Title: Literature and Art as Cognitive Objects
Subtitle: From a Poetics of Language to a Poetics of Action
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: Cambridge University Press
http://www.cambridge.org/linguistics
Book URL: https://www.cambridge.org/ch/universitypress/subjects/languages-linguistics/stylistics/literature-and-art-cognitive-objects-poetics-language-poetics-action?format=HB

Author(s): Patricia Kolaiti

Hardback ISBN: 9781316517086 Pages: 258 Price: U.K. £ 100.00
Hardback ISBN: 9781316517086 Pages: 258 Price: Europe EURO 116.71
Hardback ISBN: 9781316517086 Pages: 258 Price: U.S. $ 130.00

Abstract:

What makes literature and art the distinct kinds of entities they are? Previous attempts to prove that artworks and literary texts are formally and structurally distinguishable from other objects have been misinterpreted to mean that any distinction between art and non-art must be largely sociological. This book takes a radically new approach to this long-standing question. Shifting the focus from the artwork itself to art as a case of human agency, it sets out a groundbreaking theory of literature and art as a single cognitive and natural entity. It argues that literature and art is neither sociologically determined nor a body of artefacts, but a unique type of action enabled by art-specific processes in the mind-internal and body-internal reality of human agents. With wide implications for existing debates, this book is essential reading for researchers and students in linguistics, philosophy and the cognitive sciences.

Written In: English (eng)