Joycean text/empathic reader
a modest Contribution to literary neuroaesthetics
pp. 173-192
in: Sylvain Belluc, Valérie Bénéjam (eds), Cognitive Joyce, Berlin, Springer, 2018Abstract
From the visual to the articulatory, from the rhythmical to the affective, and from the somesthetic to the spiritual, Stephen Dedalus' poetic maturing in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man invites us to travel the paths leading from body to mind and from mind to body. How does Joyce's writing formulate such an invitation? And how does the reader's neurophysiological, imitative body respond to it? It is through a neuroaesthetic conception of reading as an embodied performance relying on empathic resonance and sensorimotor simulation that I propose to explore how the Joycean text reconfigures the reader's sensorimotor experience.
