Kafka’s Cognitive Realism

Exploring the interconnections between literary analysis and scientific discourse, this volume addresses the cognitive effects of Kafka’s compelling prose, asking how it evokes perception and how it induces cognitive, perceptual, and emotional responses in its readers.

Rather than constructing a complex terminological framework to support the interplay of literary criticism and science, Troscianko shows how the two can be brought more directly into dialogue with each other. In so doing, she illuminates Kafka’s poetics and its effects on readers. She shows how the cognitive sciences, including psychology, consciousness studies, and philosophy of mind, can enrich the practice and theory of the study of literature, taking Kafka’s fiction as a prime example. By investigating perception in Kafka, she advances the concept of cognitive realism as a framework for the study of literary texts more generally.