Public Lecture at the University of Oslo: Siri Hustvedt on Poetic Logic

Siri Hustvedt, renowned author of novels, poems, essays as well as non-fiction, will use her own mother and Jane Austen as starting point for a discussion of the cognitive sciences and the workings of the mind in a lecture entitled “Poetic Logic”.

“Poetic Logic” opens with a story about Hustvedt's mother’s vivid recollection of a passage from Austen’s Persuasion despite the fact that she is suffering from dementia. Her mother’s failing memory and the Austen text serve to ground Hustvedt's discussion of cognitive science, memory and emotion and the mind/body bifurcation of first generation theory in CCTM as well as the complexities and disagreements of second generation embodied theory. The foci here are on emotion and consolidation, mental space in comprehension of literature, and the development of intersubjectivity as crucial to understanding cognition. Poetic logic is borrowed from Vico, the anti-Cartesian, who is discussed, as are ancient spatial memory systems, neuroscience findings, but always returning to her mother as reader and the Austen text.
University of Oslo, Literature, Cognition and Emotions (LCE)
May 27, 2019, 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM, Georg Sverdrups Hus, Auditorium 1