"Readers create a continuing consciousness out of scattered references to a particular character and read this consciousness as an "embedded narrative" within the whole narrative of the novel. The combination of these embedded narratives forms the plot. This perspective on narrative enables us to explore hitherto neglected aspects of fictional minds such as dispositions, emotions, and action. It also highlights the social public and dialogic mind and the "mind beyond the skin." For example much of our thought is intermental, or joint, group or shared; even our identity is to an extent socially distributed.".

In Our Fictional Minds, David C. Fisher, Ph.D. challenges often-cherished convictions about ourselves and the world around us. By drawing on psychology, physics, neuroscience, as well as Western and Buddhist philosophies, he shows how common views of reality, consciousness, and the mind both serve and limit us. This revolutionary book helps readers: Identify mental shortcuts that limit our openness to new or opposing ideas. Become more comfortable with ambiguity, encouraging creativity and flexibility. See the nature and origins of their conceptions of “self” through a striking case example of hypnosis. Consider viewpoints challenging the appearance of free will. Develop flexible thinking to prevent being manipulated. Reimagine introspection and consciousness. Develop fluid and interconnected concepts of the self, enhancing self-acceptance, resilience, and empathy. Conceive reality itself from a fresh perspective, bringing a sense of interconnectedness and inner peace. Embracing such new approaches usually means confronting, and ultimately discarding, deeply held convictions about ourselves and reality. Those who can meet these challenges embark on an enlightening journey of self-discovery. By bringing this new thinking to the forefront, readers will see not only themselves as part of something vast and extraordinary, but better understand the potential in us all for transformation.

George Eliot (1819-1880) is known for her psychoanalysis of the majority of her characters in her literary works. In her second novel, The Mill on the Floss (1860), she focuses on the fictional minds’ subjective first thoughts and intentions. She shows how their unsympathetic workings cause private and collective tragedy by the end of narrative. The novel has frequently been acclaimed by critics and readers alike. However, this book presents a re-evaluation of the text with the help of terminologies borrowed from cognitive narratology in order to shed new light on the significance of one-track minds in this narrative. The book explores the mental functioning of the individual fictional minds, and examines how different modes of mental activities influence the interpersonal relationships between and among the characters. Accordingly, the study argues that the main cause of tragedy in The Mill on the Floss stems from at least two factors. First, the central fictional minds primarily function on the basis of their self-centered thoughts and emotions, over which they usually do not have control. Second, the tragedy is an effect of the social minds’ or public opinion’s unforgetting, unforgiving, and unsympathetic perspectives of any unconventional behavior.

Why We Read Fiction offers a lucid overview of the most exciting area of research in contemporary cognitive psychology known as "Theory of Mind" and discusses its implications for literary studies. It covers a broad range of fictional narratives, from Richardson s Clarissa, Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment, and Austen s Pride and Prejudice to Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Nabokov's Lolita, and Hammett s The Maltese Falcon. Zunshine's surprising new interpretations of well-known literary texts and popular cultural representations constantly prod her readers to rethink their own interest in fictional narrative. Written for a general audience, this study provides a jargon-free introduction to the rapidly growing interdisciplinary field known as cognitive approaches to literature and culture.

Social Minds in the Novel is the highly readable sequel to Alan Palmer's award-winning and much-acclaimed Fictional Minds. Here he argues that because of its undue emphasis on the inner, introspective, private, solitary, and individual mind, literary theory tells only part of the story of how characters in novels think. In addition to this internalist view, Palmer persuasively advocates an externalist perspective on the outer, active, public, social, and embodied mind. His analysis reveals, for example, that a good deal of fictional thought is intermental-- joint, group, shared, or collective. Social Minds in the Novel Social minds are not of marginal interest; they are central to our understanding of fictional storyworlds. The purpose of this groundbreaking and important book is to put the complex and fascinating relationship between social and individual minds at the heart of narrative theory. The book will be of interest to scholars in narrative theory, cognitive poetics or stylistics, cognitive approaches to literature, philosophy of mind, social psychology, and the nineteenth-century novel. focuses primarily on the epistemological and ethical debate in the nineteenth-century novel about the extent of our knowledge of the workings of other minds and the purposes to which this knowledge should be put. Palmer's illuminating approach is pursued through skillful and provocative readings of Bleak House, Middlemarch, and Persuasion, and, in addition, Evelyn Waugh's Men at Arms and Ian McEwan's Enduring Love.

In this indispensable guide for anyone who must communicate in speech or writing, Schwartzberg shows that most of us fail to convince because we don't have a point-a concrete contention that we can argue, defend, illustrate, and prove. He lays out, step-by-step, how to develop one. In Joel's Schwartzberg's ten-plus years as a strategic communications trainer, the biggest obstacle he's come across-one that connects directly to nervousness, stammering, rambling, and epic fail-is that most speakers and writers don't have a point. They typically have just a title, a theme, a topic, an idea, an assertion, a catchphrase, or even something much less. A point is something more. It's a contention you can propose, argue, defend, illustrate, and prove. A point offers a position of potential value. Global warming is real is not a point. Scientific evidence shows that global warming is a real, human-generated problem that will have a devastating environmental and financial impact is a point. When we have a point, our influence snaps into place. We communicate belief, conviction, and urgency. This book shows you how to identify your point, leverage it, stick to it, and sell it and how to train others to identify and successfully make their own points.

An anthology that traces the representation of consciousness and mind creation in English literature from 700 to the present.