Imagining the self : neuroscience and twentieth-century American poetry
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- What is the self? How do we know? And how do we imagine it in relation to the world? It is difficult to think of a poet without a fundamental investment in these questions. In a similar way, neuroscientists have long wrestled with the epistemological and metaphorical constructs that govern our understanding of the brain and the mind. Nevertheless, despite decades of arguments about the cultural influence of cognitive research, little scholarly attention has been devoted to the mutuality between the histories of neuroscience and twentieth-century poetry. This dissertation focuses on the cultural context that fostered the birth of modern neuroscience, the United States, to shed light on the extent and the significance of this cross-disciplinary nexus. Over a period that goes from the early decades of the twentieth century to the present day, it examines three interconnected instances of poetic engagement with neuroscientific discourse in the form of encounters between the work of a poet (W. H. Auden, John Ashbery, and Jorie Graham) and that of a scientist (Jakob von Uexküll, Oliver Sacks, and Antonio Damasio). In this way, a representative lineage of writers reframes the evolution of the poetic imagination along the timeline of the history of neuroscience, tracking the synergy between these seemingly distant realms and their explorations of the idea of the self. The result is a methodological framework wherein the questions of literary, scientific, and cultural historians do not simply overlap, but must be addressed in dialogue with one another, modeling a new perspective on our understanding of human nature and its place in the world.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2023; ©2023 |
| Publication date | 2023; 2023 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Bartolucci, Lorenzo |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Greene, Roland, 1957- |
| Thesis advisor | Greene, Roland, 1957- |
| Thesis advisor | Jenkins, Nicholas (Nicholas Richard) |
| Thesis advisor | Nemerov, Alexander |
| Thesis advisor | Wittman, Laura |
| Degree committee member | Jenkins, Nicholas (Nicholas Richard) |
| Degree committee member | Nemerov, Alexander |
| Degree committee member | Wittman, Laura |
| Associated with | Stanford University, School of Humanities and Sciences |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Comparative Literature |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Lorenzo Bartolucci. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Comparative Literature. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2023. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/fy875gt9645 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2023 by Lorenzo Bartolucci
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC-ND).
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