Distraction: Problems of Attention in Eighteenth-Century Literature
304
Distraction: Problems of Attention in Eighteenth-Century Literature
304Hardcover
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Overview
Early novel reading typically conjures images of rapt readers in quiet rooms, but commentators at the time described reading as a fraught activity, one occurring amidst a distracting cacophony that included sloshing chamber pots and wailing street vendors. Auditory distractions were compounded by literary ones as falling paper costs led to an explosion of print material, forcing prose fiction to compete with a dizzying array of essays, poems, sermons, and histories. In Distraction, Natalie M. Phillips argues that prominent Enlightenment authors—from Jane Austen and William Godwin to Eliza Haywood and Samuel Johnson—were deeply engaged with debates about the wandering mind, even if they were not equally concerned about the problem of distractibility.
Phillips explains that some novelists in the 1700s—viewing distraction as a dangerous wandering from singular attention that could lead to sin or even madness—attempted to reform diverted readers. Johnson and Haywood, for example, worried that contemporary readers would only focus long enough to “look into the first pages” of essays and novels; Austen offered wry commentary on the issue through the creation of the daft Lydia Bennet, a character with an attention span so short she could listen only “half-a-minute.” Other authors radically redefined distraction as an excellent quality of mind, aligning the multiplicity of divided focus with the spontaneous creation of new thought. Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, for example, won audiences with its comically distracted narrator and uniquely digressive form.
Using cognitive science as a framework to explore the intertwined history of mental states, philosophy, science, and literary forms, Phillips explains how arguments about the diverted mind made their way into the century’s most celebrated literature. She also draws a direct link between the disparate theories of focus articulated in eighteenth-century literature and modern experiments in neuroscience, revealing that contemporary questions surrounding short attention spans are grounded in long conversations over the nature and limits of focus.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781421420127 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Johns Hopkins University Press |
| Publication date: | 09/13/2016 |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.30(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Table of Contents
PrefaceIntroduction. The Literary History of Distraction The Unifocal and the Multifocal The Rise of the Distracted CharacterAttention, Distraction, and Enlightenment Philosophy of MindA Swiftly Tilting MadnessCategorizing Distraction
1. Mind Wandering: Forms of Distraction in the Eighteenth-Century EssayDistraction and the Eighteenth-Century Essay The Rhetoric of Attention: Appealing to Pathos and Brevitas The Essay as a Tool of Focus Training Attention to Attention Strengthening Focus: Repetition and Dramatic Irony Economies of Attention The History of Attention Span
2. Lapses of Concentration: Distracted Vigilance and the Female MindEnvironment and Mind: Urban Diversion and the Distracted Brain The Problem of a Soft Female Mind Sex, Environment, and the Multifocal Coquette The Challenges of Situational Awareness Philosophizing Multiplicity: Cognitive Bottlenecks and Sorting Gloves Strained Omniscience and the Distracted Heroine The Crowded Syntax of Sexual Inattention "Might as Well Be Passed Over as Read:" Indulging the Diverted Reader 3. Scattered Attention: Distraction and the Rhythm of Cognitive Overload Rhythms of Narrative, Rhythms of Mind The Scattered Rhythms of Cognitive Overload Susannah and the Vexed Situation of Madam Reader The Anatomy of Parallel Processing The Sermon: Asynchronous Rhythms of Prose Hobbyhorses and the Individual Beat of Interest Irregular Distraction: The Tempo of Cognitive Overload Rhythms of the Brain: Creativity and the Timing of Distraction
4. Fixated Attention: The Gothic Pathology of Single-Minded FocusMicroscope and Mind Scientific Metaphors and the Madness of Attention The Politics and Poetics of Fixation Involuntary Attention: A Multifocal Selective Blindness Sympathy and the Benefits of Distraction Rewriting Suspense: Interruption and the Gothic Sublime Fixation and the Science of Obsession 5. Divided Attention: Characterization and Cognitive Richness in Jane Austen The Power of Multitasking in Pride and Prejudice The Singular Importance of Inattentive Characters Mr. Hurst: The Limited Capacity of the Undivided Mind Mrs. Jenkinson: Narrow Bandwidth and the Creation of Depth Lydia and Miss Bingley: Caricaturing Cognitive Vacancy The Dangers of Too Much Attention Distraction as Liveliness of Mind Mary Bennet: Hyperfocus and Cognitive Immobility Lady Catherine de Bourgh: The Problem of Excess Vigilance Elizabeth Bennet: The Benefits of Diversion Characterizing Reading: Maps of Distraction and Interest
Coda: History of Mind and Literary Neuroscience Interdisciplinarity: From Theory to Practice Literary Attention: An fMRI Study of Reading Jane Austen The Value of Literary History
NotesBibliographyIndex
What People are Saying About This
This book has it all: a brilliant and thorough tour of eighteenth-century literary history, an equally brilliant and thorough tour of recent cognitive neuroscience, and a serious philosophical reflection on distraction and attention. The book is written for its readers in a widely accessible and enjoyable style. So wide-ranging is it in scope and ambition that it can lay claim to being a late Enlightenment manifesto for bringing together our humanistic and scientific ways of knowing.
The problem of managing the distracted reader did not arise in the age of digital media. Eighteenth-century writers experimented with distraction to hold their readers’ attention and, in the process of doing so, advanced theories of concentration in eighteenth-century psychology. Weaving together literary criticism, history, and cognitive neuroscience (replete with the trailblazing fMRI studies of novel reading), Phillips tells a brilliant and witty story of attention and distraction. This is cognitive historicism at its best, a touchstone for interdisciplinary inquiry.
In her remarkable study, Phillips provides a new set of lenses for the reading of eighteenth-century literature. Her scrutiny of forms of attention (and its deficits) that literary texts debated, tested, and enacted will change the way we understand the formal strategies and fictive scenarios involved in representing both the scatter-brained and the mono-maniacally focused denizens of eighteenth-century fictional worlds. Well informed but not overawed by the debates and discoveries of contemporary neuroscience, and conversant with the narratology on representation of minds, Phillips offers a contextual study of the first order.
A stellar contribution to cognitive historicist studies, Distraction is engagingly written, lucidly argued, and highly original. This book will be read, reviewed, and talked about.—Alan Richardson, Boston College, author of The Neural Sublime: Cognitive Theories and Romantic Texts
The problem of managing the distracted reader did not arise in the age of digital media. Eighteenth-century writers experimented with distraction to hold their readers’ attention and, in the process of doing so, advanced theories of concentration in eighteenth-century psychology. Weaving together literary criticism, history, and cognitive neuroscience (replete with the trailblazing fMRI studies of novel reading), Phillips tells a brilliant and witty story of attention and distraction. This is cognitive historicism at its best, a touchstone for interdisciplinary inquiry.—Lisa Zunshine, University of Kentucky, editor of Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies
This book has it all: a brilliant and thorough tour of eighteenth-century literary history, an equally brilliant and thorough tour of recent cognitive neuroscience, and a serious philosophical reflection on distraction and attention. The book is written for its readers in a widely accessible and enjoyable style. So wide-ranging is it in scope and ambition that it can lay claim to being a late Enlightenment manifesto for bringing together our humanistic and scientific ways of knowing.—Blakey Vermeule, Stanford University, author of Why Do We Care about Literary Characters?
In her remarkable study, Phillips provides a new set of lenses for the reading of eighteenth-century literature. Her scrutiny of forms of attention (and its deficits) that literary texts debated, tested, and enacted will change the way we understand the formal strategies and fictive scenarios involved in representing both the scatter-brained and the mono-maniacally focused denizens of eighteenth-century fictional worlds. Well informed but not overawed by the debates and discoveries of contemporary neuroscience, and conversant with the narratology on representation of minds, Phillips offers a contextual study of the first order.—Suzanne Keen, Washington and Lee University, author Thomas Hardy’s Brains: Psychology, Neurology, and Hardy’s Imagination
A superb example of cognitive historicism, Phillips' book makes modern cognitive science attend to its own intellectual history. Her literary study focuses our attention on the eighteenth century and makes a strong case for the period as the climax in an ongoing story about distraction, wandering minds, and scattered attention. After fresh, insightful readings of Samuel Johnson, Eliza Haywood, Laurence Sterne, and William Godwin, Phillips treats her reader to a scientific stunt, delivering Jane Austen by way of magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In truth, her exposition is throughout punctuated with references to neuroanatomy and neuroimaging in order to establish the untold ways in which literature informs current thinking about the brain.—Brad Pasanek, University of Virginia, author of Metaphors of Mind: An Eighteenth-Century Dictionary
A superb example of cognitive historicism, Phillips' book makes modern cognitive science attend to its own intellectual history. Her literary study focuses our attention on the eighteenth century and makes a strong case for the period as the climax in an ongoing story about distraction, wandering minds, and scattered attention. After fresh, insightful readings of Samuel Johnson, Eliza Haywood, Laurence Sterne, and William Godwin,Phillips treats her reader to a scientific stunt, delivering Jane Austen by way ofmagnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).In truth, her exposition is throughout punctuated with references to neuroanatomy and neuroimaging in order to establish the untold ways in which literature informs current thinking about the brain.
A stellar contribution to cognitive historicist studies, Distraction is engagingly written, lucidly argued, and highly original. This book will be read, reviewed, and talked about.