Wednesday, October 12th, 2011
Proposal
Cognitive Reading of The Dead by James Joyce
As our knowledge of cognitive science expands, many are asking what cognitive science and literature can reveal about each other. Although many have viewed the two as separate fields, new scientific discoveries and insights can tell us about literature, and literature has been telling us about human thought all along. Although the body of literary criticism of James Joyce’s “The Dead” is extensive, it has yet to be examined through the lens of cognitive science. Doing so would enrich our knowledge both about Joyce’s narrative technique and advance the application of cognitive science to literary criticism.
The role of haunting, in the larger context of memory, and its relationship with the senses, are an integral part of The Dead and compliment what we know about the neurological functions of memory, self identity and our experience of the passage of time. Joyce’s narrative technique, and the theme of haunting, illustrate how human thought functions. His insight into the mind of Gabriel Conroy, and Gabriel’s epiphany about his wife’s innermost thoughts, provides insight into how the mind, and specifically memory, works.
In his 2002 essay ‘The Memories of The Dead’, Kevil Whelan offers an “excavation of the historical layers—biographical, literary, historical, geographical, musical” of The Dead, specifically looking at the story’s references to the Famine. He claims that post-Famine Ireland gravitated towards Modernist writing because it was country coping with an identity crisis and already conscious of language. Whalen spends most of the essay exploring Ireland’s past and its influence on writers of Joyce’s time, often focusing specifically on The Dead. ‘The Irish past, like Michael Furey in ‘The Dead’,” he writes, ‘can only return to the present as an absence: the Irish language, love, a national community have all been consigned to the spectral” (Whalen, 2002 p. 66). For Whalen, Michael Furey can be seen as a “symbolic of a vibrant, passionate life which has vanished” from Ireland (Whalen, p. 70). In his 2002 essay ‘The Memories of The Dead’, Kevil Whelan offers an “excavation of the historical layers—biographical, literary, historical, geographical, musical” of The Dead, specifically looking at the story’s references to the Famine. He claims that post-Famine Ireland gravitated towards Modernist writing because it was country coping with an identity crisis and already conscious of language. Whalen spends most of the essay exploring Ireland’s past and its influence on writers of Joyce’s time, often focusing specifically on The Dead. ‘The Irish past, like Michael Furey in ‘The Dead’,” he writes, ‘can only return to the present as an absence: the Irish language, love, a national community have all been consigned to the spectral” (Whalen, 2002 p. 66). For Whalen, Michael Furey can be seen as a “symbolic of a vibrant, passionate life which has vanished” from Ireland (Whalen, p. 70). Although Whalen does an excellent job of providing a historical and biographical context for “The Dead”, viewing it through several lenses, and just a historical one, will advance literary knowledge about narrative technique.
To conduct this study, I will be using literary criticism, such as Whalen (2002), cultural history and scientific studies. I will be researching how memory and self-identity work, as well as how humans construct time as well as cognitive science’s explanation as to why we experience the supernatural. In his popular book Proust was a Neuroscientist (2007), Jonah Lehrer writes about how Marcel Proust wrote accurately about memory in his fiction, foreshadowing contemporary scientific understanding of how memories form. I will be using Lehrer’s book and Imagining Minds by Kay Young, a book that uses cognitive theory to conduct close readings of 19th century novels, as potential models for the study.
Investigating “The Dead” through the lens of cognitive science will, of course, have several limitations. Primarily that there is rarely only one theory and, since many of those theories are incomplete and changing, the study may be quickly out of date. As Lehrer writes, we still don’t entirely understand memory. Yet, our understanding of human thought and, by extension, the fiction we read will inevitably shift as cognitive science becomes increasingly central to our understanding of ourselves, and the world. Literary critics have yet to explore “The Dead” through a cognitive lens, but the narrative technique explores and plays with human thought.
Bibliography
Henigan, Julie. “’The Old Irish Tonality’” Folksong as Emotional Catalyst in ‘The Dead’” New Hibernia Review, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Winter 2007): 136-148
Kelleher, John V. “Irish History and Mythology in James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’.” The Review of Politics, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Jul. 1965): 414-433
Lehrer, Jonah. Proust was a Neuroscientist. Boston: Mariner Books, 2007.
Whelan, Kevin. “Memories of The Dead.” The Yale Journal of Criticism, Volume 15, No. 1 (2002): 59-97
Young, Kay. Imagining Minds.
