AustLit

'Jean-François Vernay, declaring the scope of cognitive literary studies in this collection, says that the eight contributors draw on recent scientific findings "by exploring the mental processes at work in the creative minds of writers and readers" (2). Terms particular to neurocognition, he says, usefully emphasize that bodily conditions and environments alike influence individual perception and cultural development. While it would be interesting to hear a neuroscientist discuss Australian literature, all of the contributors here come from the literary side; thus, the collection seems less a radical melding of science and literature than a sometimes refreshing, even exciting, extension of conventional strategies of literary criticism in agglomerating methods that originate in other disciplines. Even without hard neuroscience, a focus here on the dynamism of interactions between writers and readers produces new opportunities, strong ones indeed, for close examination of those relationships.' (Introduction)