The Routledge Companion to Literature and Cognitive Studies

The Routledge Companion to Literature and Cognitive Studies offers a comprehensive survey of cognitive approaches to literature, introducing the influential theoretical tools and latest developments in this vigorously multi-disciplinary field, by leading scholars illuminating the cognitive, affective, and bodily dimensions of literary reading. Comprising three main sections, this Companion oversees the history of the field, core issues and topics, and the vital new debates of cognitive theory. This volume introduces readers to the many new tools and methodologies in the field, including:

• the context of the first generation of cognitive literary studies

• mental representations and information-processing paradigms

• critical debates and developments, including cognitive cultural studies, 4E cognition and literature, as well as empirical investigations of cognitive processes

• approaches to a variety of literary genres and media.

This comprehensive companion provides an important reference work for upper-level students and researchers delving into the interdisciplinary approaches to literature and cognitive studies.

Jan Alber is Professor and Chair of New English and American Literature at JLU Giessen University (Germany) and a past president of the International Society for the Study of Narrative (ISSN). He is the author of Narrating the Prison (2007) and Unnatural Narrative: Impossible Worlds in Fiction and Drama (2016). Alber’s articles have been published in journals such as European Journal of English Studies, Journal of Narrative Theory, Literature Compass, Narrative, Poetics Today, Scientific Study of Literature, Storyworlds, and Style. He is the editor (or co-editor) of 13 edited collections, the most recent one being Pandemic Storytelling (with Deborah de Muijnck and Jessica Jumpertz) (2025). Alber is currently working on a UKRI project (funded by AHRC and the German Research Foundation) on post-postmodernist fictions of the digital (PPFDs) with Alice Bell.

Ralf Schneider is Professor and Chair of English Literature at RWTH Aachen University, where he is also Co-Founder and Director of the Aachen Center for Cognitive and Empirical Literary Studies (ACCELS). He has worked and published on various aspects of British literary and cultural history. However, his research focus has been on cognitive approaches to literary reading, in particular the reception of literary characters. A monograph on character constellations and the cognitive and empirical study of literature, to be published with Routledge, is in preparation.

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