Roberta Tucker Disorientation , Reorientation , A Compulsion to Explain

The articles in this issue attempt to better understand the specific relationship between literature and the workings of the brain/mind. It includes articles from a literary scholar and poet who examines the neurological basis of writing poetry, and from four literary scholars: one who looks at the relation between some specific poetic techniques and the functioning of certain processing systems in the brain, one who examines how bodily systems outside the brain are enlisted in the reading experience, one who uses a philosophical approach to look at the specific issue of solipsism and its treatment in literature, and one who looks at how literature is an example of a conceptual integration system that makes us distinctly human. Some commonalities emerge: an often deliberate tampering with mental processing both conscious and unconscious, a purposeful disorientation followed by a reorientation, a link with mystic or god experiences, and a compulsion to engage in this kind of activity. The experience is almost always seen by these critics as beneficial, or potentially beneficial, although historically that has not always been the case, and even today, is called upon to be defended. The differences — and the complexity — appear in the specifics: which processes, how they are tampered with, how the writer or reader is reoriented, what kind of experiences are evoked, or provoked, why people engage in this activity. It can also be argued that the same commonalities appear in other forms of art as well, such as painting, music, etc. So another concern here is how these commonalities are linked specifically to literature’s medium, language.