Patrick Colm Hogan

Patrick Colm Hogan argues that, to a remarkable degree, the stories people admire in different cultures follow a limited number of patterns determined by cross-culturally constant ideas about emotion. Hogan draws on world literature; experimental research treating emotion and emotion concepts; and methodological principles from contemporary linguistics and philosophy of science. He concludes with a discussion of the relationship between the narrative, emotion concepts, and the biological and social components of emotion.

Narrative Universals and Human Emotion

The Mind and its Stories

Stories engage our emotions. We?ve known this at least since the days of Plato and Aristotle. What this book helps us to understand now is how our own emotions fundamentally organize and orient stories. In light of recent cognitive research and wide reading in different narrative traditions, Patrick Colm Hogan argues that the structure of stories is a systematic product of human emotion systems. Examining the ways in which incidents, events, episodes, plots, and genres are a function of emotional processes, he demonstrates that emotion systems are absolutely crucial for understanding stories. Hogan also makes a case for the potentially integral role that stories play in the development of our emotional lives. He provides an in-depth account of the function of emotion within story?in widespread genres with romantic, heroic, and sacrificial structures, and more limited genres treating parent/child separation, sexual pursuit, criminality, and revenge?as these appear in a variety of cross-cultural traditions. In the course of the book Hogan develops interpretations of works ranging from Tolstoy?s Anna Karenina to African oral epics, from Sanskrit comedy to Shakespearean tragedy. Integrating the latest research in affective science with narratology, this book provides a powerful explanatory account of narrative organization.

The Emotional Structure of Stories

Affective Narratology

"Literature provides us with otherwise unavailable insights into the ways emotions are produced, experienced and enacted in human social life. It is particularly valuable because it deepens our comprehension of the mutual relations between emotional response and ethical judgment. These are the central claims of Hogan's study, which carefully examines a range of highly esteemed literary works in the context of current neurobiological, psychological, sociological and other empirical research. In this work, he explains the value of literary study for a cognitive science of emotion and outlines the emotional organization of the human mind. He explores the emotions of romantic love, grief, mirth, guilt, shame, jealousy, attachment, compassion and pity - in each case drawing on one work by Shakespeare and one or more works by writers from different historical periods or different cultural backgrounds, such as the eleventh-century Chinese poet Li Ch'ing-Chao and the contemporary Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka"--

What literature teaches us about emotion

"Style has often been understood both too broadly and too narrowly. In consequence, it has not defined a psychologically coherent area of study. In the opening chapter, Hogan first defines style so as to make possible a consistent and systematic theoretical account of the topic in relation to cognitive and affective science. Hogan illustrates the main points of the first, theoretical chapter by reference to several works, prominently Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Subsequent chapters in Part I focus on some under-researched aspects of literary style. Specifically, the second chapter explores the level of story construction for the scope of an authorial canon, treating Shakespeare. The third chapter turns to verbal narration in a single work, Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Part II, on film style, begins with a theoretical chapter on film style. It turns, in chapter 5, to the perceptual interface in the genre of "painterly" films (films that draw on stylistic features of other visual arts), examining works by Rodriguez, Mehta, Rohmer, and Husain. The sixth chapter treats the level of plot in the postwar films of Ozu. The remaining film chapter turns to visual narration in a single work, Lu's Nanjing! Nanjing! The third part comprises a single chapter. It addresses theoretical and interpretive issues bearing on style in graphic fiction, with a focus on Spiegelman's Maus. An Afterword touches briefly on some possible implications of stylistic analysis for political critique"--

Aspects of an Affective-Cognitive Stylistics

Style in Narrative

Given Ulysses’ perhaps unparalleled attention to the operations of the human mind, it is unsurprising that critics have explored the work’s psychology. Nonetheless, there has been very little research that draws on recent cognitive science to examine thought and emotion in this novel. Hogan sets out to expand our understanding of Ulysses, as well as our theoretical comprehension of narrative—and even our views of human cognition. He revises the main narratological accounts of the novel, clarifying the complex nature of narration and style. He extends his cognitive study to encompass the anti-colonial and gender concerns that are so obviously important to Joyce’s work. Finally, through a combination of broad overviews and detailed textual analyses, Hogan seeks to make this notoriously difficult book more accessible to non-specialists.

Ulysses and the Poetics of Cognition

This accessible volume provides a strong foundation of the basic principles of cognitive science, and allows us to begin to understand how the brain works and makes us feel as we read.

A Guide for Humanists

Cognitive Science, Literature, and the Arts

What is Colonialism? develops a clear and rigorous account of what colonialism is and how it works. It draws on and synthesizes recent work in cognitive science, affective science, and social psychology, along with Marxism and related forms of analysis. Hogan begins with some fundamental conceptual distinctions, such as the degree to which a group shares beliefs, dispositions, and skills versus the degree to which they share identification with a category. Building on these distinctions, he defines colonialism in terms of political, economic, and cultural autonomy, clarifying the nature of culture and autonomy particularly. He goes on to articulate an invaluable systematic account of the varieties of colonialism. The final chapters outline the motives of imperialists, differentiating these from their ideological rationalizations, and sketching the harms caused by colonialism. The book concludes by considering when, or if, one can achieve a genuinely postcolonial condition. Hogan illustrates these analyses by examining influential literary works—by European writers (such as Joseph Conrad) and by non-Europeans (such as Athol Fugard, Kamala Markandaya, and Wole Soyinka). This accessible and informative volume is the ideal resource for students and scholars interested in colonialism and empire.

What is Colonialism?

During the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent, Kashmir--a Muslim-majority area ruled by a Hindu maharaja--became a hotly disputed territory. Divided between India and Pakistan, the region has been the focus of international wars and the theater of political and military struggles for self-determination. The result has been great human suffering within the state, with political implications extending globally. Imagining Kashmir examines cinematic and literary imaginings of the Kashmir region's conflicts and diverse citizenship, analyzing a wide range of narratives from writers and directors such as Salman Rushdie, Bharat Wakhlu, Mani Ratnam, and Mirza Waheed in conjunction with research in psychology, cognitive science, and social neuroscience. In this innovative study, Patrick Colm Hogan's historical and cultural analysis of Kashmir advances theories of narrative, colonialism, and their corresponding ideologies in relation to the cognitive and affective operations of identity. Hogan considers how narrative organizes people's understanding of, and emotions about, real political situations and the ways in which such situations in turn influence cultural narratives, not only in Kashmir but around the world.

Emplotment and Colonialism

Imagining Kashmir

Patrick Colm Hogan, a leading theorist of cognitive cultural studies, offers the first cognitive cultural study of identity in sex, sexuality, and gender. With precise conceptual distinctions, wide-ranging citation of empirical research, and careful explication of diverse literary works, Hogan defends a systematic skepticism about gender differences and a view of sexuality as evolved but also contingent and variable.

A Cognitive Literary Study

Sexual Identities

This original interdisciplinary study argues that understanding how narrative works in literature is crucial to understanding moral thought.

Literature and Moral Feeling

Have you lost track of developments in generative linguistics, finding yourself unsure about the distinctive features of Minimalism? Would you like to know more about recent advances in the genetics of language, or about right hemisphere linguistic operation? Has your interest in narrative drawn you to question the relation between stories and grammars? The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Language Sciences addresses these issues, along with hundreds of others. It includes basic entries for those unfamiliar with a given topic and more specific entries for those seeking more specialized knowledge. It incorporates both well-established findings and cutting-edge research and classical approaches and new theoretical innovations. The volume is aimed at readers who have an interest in some aspect of language science but wish to learn more about the broad range of ideas, findings, practices, and prospects that constitute this rapidly expanding field, a field arguably at the center of current research on the human mind and human society.

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Language Sciences

This book explores how the creations of great authors result from the same operations as our everyday counterfactual and hypothetical imaginations, which cognitive scientists refer to as "simulations." Drawing on detailed literary analyses as well as recent research in neuroscience and related fields, Patrick Colm Hogan develops a rigorous theory of the principles governing simulation that goes beyond any existing framework. He examines the functions and mechanisms of narrative imagination, with particular attention to the role of theory of mind, and relates this analysis to narrative universals. In the course of this theoretical discussion, Hogan explores works by Austen, Faulkner, Shakespeare, Racine, Brecht, Kafka, and Calvino. He pays particular attention to the principles and parameters defining an author's narrative idiolect, examining the cognitive and emotional continuities that span an individual author's body of work.

How Authors' Minds Make Stories

Beginning with Greek, Arabic, and Sanskrit classics, Hogan explains the philosophical work that has been crucial to literary theory, moving through Kant and the German Idealists (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel) and post-Idealists (Nietzsche, Marx), to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and the recent European schools (Foucaultian historicism, structuralism, deconstruction, and so on). He also presents the Anglo-American tradition, from logical positivism to Wittgenstein and the Ordinary Language theorists, from Chomskyan linguistics to cognitive science and philosophy of science. Beyond the founding principles and general structure of these theories, Hogan illustrates their practical application and value with interpretive discussions of Othello and Agha Shahid Ali's "I Dream It Is Afternoon When I Return to Delhi."

Philosophical Approaches to the Study of Literature

In Personal Identity and Literature, Hogan examines what makes an individual a particular, unique self. He draws on cognitive and affective science as well as literary works - from Walt Whitman and Frederick Douglass to Dorothy Richardson, Alice Munro, and J. M. Coetzee. His scholarly analyses are also intertwined with more personal reflections, on for example his mother’s memory loss. The result is a work that examines a complex topic by drawing on a unique range of resources, from empirical psychology and philosophy to novels, films, and biographical experiences. The book provides a clear, systematic account of personal identity that is theoretically strong, but also unique and engaging.

Personal Identity and Literature

Recent decades have witnessed an explosion in neuroscientific and related research treating aesthetic response. This book integrates this research with insights from philosophical aesthetics to propose new answers to longstanding questions about beauty and sublimity. Hogan begins by distinguishing what we respond to as beautiful from what we count socially as beautiful. He goes on to examine the former in terms of information processing (specifically, prototype approximation and non-habitual pattern recognition) and emotional involvement (especially of the endogenous reward and attachment systems). In the course of the book, Hogan examines such issues as how universal principles of aesthetic response may be reconciled with individual idiosyncrasy, how it is possible to argue rationally over aesthetic response, and what role personal beauty and sublimity might play in the definition of art. To treat these issues, the book considers works by Woolf, Wharton, Shakespeare, Arthur Miller, Beethoven, Matisse, and Kiran Rao, among others.

A Cognitive Aesthetics of Literature and the Arts

Beauty and Sublimity

THE DEATH OF THE GODDESS is an epic, narrative poem that is a moving account of affection, personal loss, and grief. Inspired by Buddhism, Indic thought and Hogan’s reading of the Bhagavad Gita, the central figures are two lovers who refuse to accept unjust social hierarchies and suffer separation and death for that choice. In this groundbreaking narrative, Patrick Colm Hogan sets out to re-synthesize ancient Indian philosophy and myth, with a beauty and literary feeling (called “rasa” in Sanskrit) that are the central aspects of this poem. THE DEATH OF THE GODDESS is richly metaphorical and written in an innovative form where Hogan makes liberal use of the musical features of verse—rhyme, assonance, and alliteration—that combines aspects of formal patterning with the unexpectedness of free verse. There are no spare words—each line is crafted with careful accuracy, cutting with a surgeon’s precision. These unifying tie-ins make THE DEATH OF THE GODDESS an excellent literary achievement to be read by serious poetry lovers and students in mythology or epic literature alike.

A Poem in Twelve Cantos

The Death of the Goddess

Explores diverse cultural identities, both theoretically and through concrete, specific interpretations of selected major texts from former British colonies.

Crises of Tradition in the Anglophone Literatures of India, Africa, and the Caribbean

Colonialism and Cultural Identity

Indian movies are among the most popular in the world. However, despite increased availability and study, these films remain misunderstood and underappreciated in much of the English-speaking world, in part for cultural reasons. In this book, Patrick Colm Hogan sets out through close analysis and explication of culturally particular information about Indian history, Hindu metaphysics, Islamic spirituality, Sanskrit aesthetics, and other Indian traditions to provide necessary cultural contexts for understanding Indian films. Hogan analyzes eleven important films, using them as the focus to explore the topics of plot, theme, emotion, sound, and visual style in Indian cinema. These films draw on a wide range of South Asian cultural traditions and are representative of the greater whole of Indian cinema. By learning to interpret these examples with the tools Hogan provides, the reader will be able to take these skills and apply them to other Indian films. But this study is not simply culturalist. Hogan also takes up key principles from cognitive neuroscience to illustrate that all cultures share perceptual, cognitive, and emotional elements that, when properly interpreted, can help to bridge gaps between seemingly disparate societies. Hogan locates the specificity of Indian culture in relation to human universals, and illustrates this cultural-cognitive synthesis through his detailed interpretations of these films. This book will help both scholars and general readers to better understand and appreciate Indian cinema.

Culture, Cognition, and Cinematic Imagination

Understanding Indian Movies

"In Personal Identity and Literature, Patrick Hogan examines what makes an individual a particular, unique self. Hogan draws on cognitive and affective science as well as literary works--from Walt Whitman and Frederick Douglass to Dorothy Richardson, Alice Munro, and J. M. Coetzee. His scholarly analyses are also intertwined with more personal reflections, bearing for example on his mother's memory loss. The result is a work that examines a complex topic by drawing on a unique range of resources--from empirical psychology and philosophy to novels, films, and biographical experiences. The book provides a clear, systematic account of personal identity that is theoretically strong, but also unique and engaging." --

Literature and Emotion not only provides a defining overview of the field but also engages with emerging trends. Answering key questions such as �What is emotion?� and �Why emotion and literature today?,� Patrick Colm Hogan presents a clear and accessible introduction to this exciting topic. Readers should come away from the book with a systematic understanding of recent research on and theorization of emotion, knowledge of the way affective science has impacted literary study, and a sense of how to apply that understanding and knowledge to literary works.

Patrick Colm Hogan

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