Shakespeare and Cognition

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Shakespeare and Cognition examines the essential relationship between vision, knowledge, and memory in Renaissance models of cognition as seen in Shakespeare's plays. Drawing on both Aristotle's "Metaphysics" and contemporary cognitive literary theory, Arthur F. Kinney explores five key objects/images in Shakespeare's plays -- crowns, bells, rings, graves, and ghosts -- that are not actually seen (or, in the case of the latter, not meant to be seen), but are central to the imaginations of both the playwright and the playgoers. By examining the reception of these iconic objects over time, Kinney lends a new perspective to the long-lasting conflict between the humanists who insist Shakespeare's language is universal and the theorists and new historicists who argue that Shakespeare's texts are particular to his time. Kinney demonstrates that while no object and no passage in Shakespeare has a universal and single meaning, the ways in which these objects bridge our "natural responses" (as they did Shakespeare's audience in his own time) may help to explain the power, popularity, and influence of Shakespeare's drama today.