The Renaissance Extended Mind explores the parallels and contrasts between current philosophical notions of the mind as extended across brain, body and world, and analogous notions in literary, philosophical, and scientific texts circulating between the fifteenth century and early-seventeenth century.1. The Extended Mind
2. Extending Literary Theory and the Psychoanalytic Tradition
3. Renaissance Subjects: Ensouled and Embodied
4. Renaissance Language and Memory Forms
5. Renaissance Intrasubjectivity and Intersubjectivity
6. Shakespeare: Natural-Born Mirrors
7. Shakespeare: Perspectives and Words of Glass
Epilogue
Miranda Anderson is a literary scholar at the University of Edinburgh. She is the initiator of, and a Research Fellow on, the AHRC-funded project, A History of Distributed Cognition. She received a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship for work on this book and was a Research Associate on the Balzan Project, based at St John's College, Oxford University. Dr Anderson combines specialization in Renaissance literary, philosophical and scientific texts, with a broader interest in investigating paradigms of the mind and self across historical and disciplinary boundaries.
The author displays a truly impressive knowledge of a variety of issues from the Renaissance, Shakespeare, and the contemporary debate in cognitive science about the embodied and extended mind. Miranda Anderson is a Renaissance woman herself, able to read ancient debates in light of more recent ones this book is aimed not just at literary theorists but also philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists.
- Giovanna Colombetti, Professor of Philosophy, University of Exeter, UK
'Imaginatively perceptive, persuasive, rigorously argued, this book sets up a genuine dialogue between Renaissance texts andl