Paleopoetics

Christopher Collins is professor emeritus of English at New York University. He is the author of several books, including Homeland Mythology: Biblical Narratives in American Culture; Reading the Written Image: Verbal Play, Interpretation, and the Roots of Iconophobia; and The Poetics of the Mind's Eye: Literature and the Psychology of Imagination.

• Preface Some Notes on Dating and Nomenclature Acknowledgments 1. The Idea of a Paleopoetics 2. From Dualities to Dyads 3. Play and Instrumentality 4. The World as We See It 5. Human Communication: From Pre-Language to Protolanguage 6. Language: Its Prelinguistic Inheritance 7. The Poetics of the Verbal Artifact Epilogue: The Neopoetics of Writing Notes Bibliography Index

This is a brilliant book. Its argument is careful and convincing and its presentation is erudite and elegant. Paleopoetics presents a history of the co-development of humanity and arts as mutually reinforcing and defining, ranging from deep prehistory to current concerns of arts and literary study. The ideas which are developed are drawn from a range of credible, multidisciplinary sources, and a huge range of literary works serves as final close evidence for much of the argument and discussion. This book represents a timely and major contribution to scholarship. -- Peter Stockwell, University of Nottingham, author of Texture: A Cognitive Aesthetics of Reading For the most part, intellectual discussions of language and its evolution focus on grammar and the dry anatomy of the sentence. Christopher Collins reminds us that language is also, and probably more fundamentally, a vehicle of performance, as expressed in ritual, song, folk tales, drama-in a word, poetics. In coining the term 'paleopoetics,' he recognizes the prehistoric antecedents of poetics in visual arts, gesture, mimesis, crafted tools, and what he calls the presymbolic mind. In linking these with our modern understanding of human cognition and brain function, he offers startling new insights into the nature of human evolution. -- Michael Corballis, University of Auckland, author of From Hand to Mouth: The Origins of Language Exploring the bodily roots of rhetoric and poetry by combining insights from Aristotle to Heidegger, from Benveniste to Langacker, and from Gestalt psychology to Merlin Donald's theory of human cognitive evolution and modern neuroscience, Paleopoetics represents a bold synthesis that helps bring closer the 'two cultures' of science and the humanities, extending it further towards performance art and literature. This book deserves to be read by all interested in the emerging fields of cognitive poetics and cognitive semiotics. -- Jordan Zlatev, Lund University, coeditor of Moving Ourselves, Moving Others: Motion and Emotion in Intersubjectivity, Consciousness, and Language Paleopoetics is an important book for anyone interested in language, linguistics, discourse, or humanities, but seems especially timely in today's poetic culture. -- Joel Weishaus Rain Taxi Careful and well written... A worthwhile addition to the literature on the evolution of the arts. -- Richard A. Richards Quarterly Review of Biology