Shakespeare and Consciousness (Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance)

This book examines how early modern and recently emerging theories of consciousness and cognitive science help us to re-imagine our engagements with Shakespeare in text and performance. Papers investigate the connections between states of mind, emotion, and sensation that constitute consciousness and the conditions of reception in our past and present encounters with Shakespeare’s works. Acknowledging previous work on inwardness, self, self-consciousness, embodied self, emotions, character, and the mind-body problem, contributors consider consciousness from multiple new perspectives―as a phenomenological process, a materially determined product, a neurologically mediated reaction, or an internally synthesized identity―approaching Shakespeare’s plays and associated cultural practices in surprising and innovative ways.

Paul Budra is Professor of English at Simon Fraser University, Canada. He is the author of A Mirror for Magistrates and the de Casibus Tradition and co-editor of the essay collections: Part Two: Reflections on the Sequel, Soldier Talk: Oral Narratives of the Vietnam War, and From Text to Txting: New Media in the Classroom.

Clifford Werier is Professor of English at Mount Royal University, Canada. He is co-editor of Much Ado About Nothing for the Internet Shakespeare Editions and has written three writing textbooks for Nelson, Canada.