Configuring cognitive architecture
mind-reading and meta-representations in Ulysses
pp. 193-207
in: Sylvain Belluc, Valérie Bénéjam (eds), Cognitive Joyce, Berlin, Springer, 2018Abstract
Noting how Bloom displays a rare capacity to see Dublin through the eyes and minds of other people, this article aims at unravelling the skein of perspectival shifts in the book. Although Bloom and Stephen exist only as black marks on white pages, our brains are able to invest emotion in them as well as to attribute a weighty degree of truth-value to their introspective contemplations. Ulysses thus turns out to be the ultimate study in the twin concepts of Theory of Mind and Meta-representation, constantly requiring readers to pick up complex cues as to the intentionality of characters, to read not just their minds but the minds represented by these characters' minds in an endless process of mental mise en abyme.