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Literature and the Extended Mind

Literature and the Extended Mind: A Reassessment of Modernism

The TOP BOF project 'Literature and the Extended Mind: A Reassessment of Modernism' led by Dirk Van Hulle at the University of Antwerp proposes a re-evaluation of the so-called 'inward turn', as applied in the field of literary criticism, by exploring the works of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Samuel Beckett. Spanning the fields of philosophy of mind, genetic criticism and cognitive narratology, the three dissertations (by respectively Emma-Louise Silva, Alison Luyten and Olga Beloborodova) that resulted from this research combined the following components: 1) the invention and production of the storyworld which can be traced through the authors' archives of notes, manuscripts, typescripts, proofs, letters and their libraries, as proffered by genetic criticism; 2) the depiction of the characters' minds in the storyworld, based on cognitive narratology; and 3) the reception and interpretation of the texts, as formed in literary criticism. The overarching philosophical framework of '4E cognition' - or the embedded, embodied, extended and enactive approaches to the mind - renders the 'inward turn' unfeasible, due to insights garnered in contemporary philosophy of mind that understand the mind as inextricably fused with body and world and thus questions the entrenched Cartesian skull-bound model of the mind.

Major Events

April 2016: Beckett and Modernism International Conference (27-30 April, University of Antwerp)
June 2018: The Art of James Joyce International Conference (the XXVI International Joyce Symposium, 11-16 June 2018, University of Antwerp)

Van Hulle Modern Manuscripts

James Joyce "Work in Progress

Postcognitivist Beckett

James Joyce and the Arts

Olga Beloborodova

Olga Beloborodova is a postdoctoral researcher and teaching assistant at the University of Antwerp, currently working at its Centre for Manuscript Genetics. She has published articles on the subjects of Beckett, cognition and genetic criticism in Journal of Beckett Studies and Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd’hui. Together with Dirk Van Hulle and Pim Verhulst, she co-edited Beckett and Modernism, published by Palgrave in 2018. She is also Assistant Editor of Journal of Beckett Studies and member of the Editorial Board of Beckett Digital Manuscript Project. Her first monograph, The Making of Samuel Beckett’s ‘Play’ / ‘Film’, was published with UPA/Bloomsbury in 2019. Her second monograph, Postcognitivist Beckett, came out in 2020 as part of the new Elements in Beckett Studies Series (Cambridge University Press).

Emma-Louise Silva

Emma-Louise Silva is a postdoctoral researcher aboard the ERC-project ‘Constructing Age for Young Readers’, led by Vanessa Joosen. Within the project she focuses on age studies, cognitive narratology, genetic criticism and philosophy of mind in children’s literature. She combines this role with a lecturing position at the University of Antwerp, where she teaches the ‘Joyce Seminar’, and where she assists with the courses ‘Introduction to the Study of Literature in English’, ‘Nineteenth-century Literature in English’, and ‘Twentieth-century Literature in English’. She provides guest lectures for the courses ‘Writers at Work’ and ‘Teaching Literature in English’. As a member of the Centre for Manuscript Genetics, Emma-Louise defended her doctoral dissertation on James Joyce in 2019, aiming to reassess the so-called ‘inward turn’ of Joyce’s modernist fiction by applying approaches formulated in philosophy of mind to Joyce’s oeuvre, within a framework that leans on cognitive narratology and genetic criticism. Her PhD was part of the Top Bof project ‘Literature and the Extended Mind: A Reassessment of Modernism’, led by Dirk Van Hulle. She has also worked as a digital editor for Peter Petré’s ERC-project ‘Mind-Bending Grammars’, and as a postdoctoral coordinator of the Pillar 1 Science and Technology Roadmap under the supervision of Mike Kestemont for Time Machine Europe

Dirk Van Hulle

Dirk Van Hulle is Professor of Bibliography and Modern Book History at the University of Oxford, Professor of English Literature at the University of Antwerp and director of the Centre for Manuscript Genetics at the University of Antwerp. With Mark Nixon, he is co-director of the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project (www.beckettarchive.org), series editor of the Cambridge UP series ‘Elements in Beckett Studies’ and editor of the Journal of Beckett Studies. His publications include Textual Awareness (2004), Modern Manuscripts (2014), Samuel Beckett’s Library (2013, with Mark Nixon), The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Beckett(2015), James Joyce’s Work in Progress (2016), the Beckett Digital Library, several of volumes in the ‘Making of’ series (Bloomsbury) and genetic editions in the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project, which won the 2019 Prize for a Bibliography, Archive or Digital Project of the Modern Language Association (MLA).