Explorations of consciousness in contemporary fiction / / edited by Grzegorz Maziarczyk, Joanna Klara Teske.

• TeilnehmendeR: Maziarczyk, Grzegorz.; Teske, Joanna Klara.
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden ;, Boston : : Brill,, 2017.
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Series: Consciousness, Literature and the Arts 51.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (259 pages).

Explorations of Consciousness in Contemporary Fiction is a collection of essays examining the potential of the contemporary English-language novel to represent and inquire into various aspects of the human mind. Grounded in contemporary literary theory as well as consciousness studies, the essays consider both narrative techniques by means of which writers attempt to render various states of consciousness (such as multimodality in digital fiction or experimental typography in post-traumatic narratives), and novelistic interpretations of issues currently being investigated by neurobiologists, cognitive scientists and philosophers of the mind (such as the adaptive value of consciousness or the process of self-integration by means of self-narration). The volume thus offers critical reflection upon the novel’s cognitive accomplishment in this challenging area. Contributors are: Nathan D. Frank, Judit Friedrich, Justyna Galant, Marta Komsta, Péter Kristóf Makai, Ajitpaul Mangat, Grzegorz Maziarczyk, James McAdams, Daniel Panka, Barbara Puschmann-Nalenz, Joanna Klara Teske, Lloyd Issac Vayo, Dóra Vecsernyés, Sylwia Wilczewska

Table of Contents

Contemporary Fiction and Consciousness / Grzegorz Maziarczyk and Joanna Klara Teske -- “Unquantifiable factors”: The Concept of Qualia in Two Novels about Artificial Intelligence by Richard Powers and David Gerrold / Dániel Panka -- Creations of the Posthuman Mind: Consciousness in Peter Watts’s Blindsight / Justyna Galant -- “Men are Noisy creachers”: Dystopian Consciousness in Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking Trilogy / Marta Komsta -- Autistic Consciousness Represented: Fictional Mental Functioning of a Different Kind / Péter Kristóf Makai -- Embodied Consciousness: Autism, Life Writing and the Limits of the Cognitive Paradigm / Ajitpaul Mangat -- Reality of the Unreal: The Use of Contradiction in Postmodern Fiction Exploring the Creative Potential of the Human Mind / Joanna Klara Teske -- Art, Madness and the Divine in Russell Hoban’s The Medusa Frequency / Sylwia Wilczewska -- Narrated Madness: Extreme States of Consciousness in A. S. Byatt’s Frederica Quartet / Barbara Puschmann-Nalenz -- Richard Powers’s “Hybrid Bastard”: The Echo Maker and “The Postpsychiatric Novel” / James McAdams -- Bullet in the Head: Jess Walter’s The Zero and the Conscious Conscience of 9/11 / Lloyd Isaac Vayo -- The Embodied Mind: Janice Galloway’s The Trick is to Keep Breathing / Dóra Vecsernyés -- Addressing the Self in Keri Hulme’s the bone people / Judit Friedrich -- Multimodality, Interactivity and Embodiment: Representation of Consciousness in Digital Narratives / Grzegorz Maziarczyk -- The Mind of Then We Came to the End: A Transmental Approach to Contemporary Metafiction / Nathan D. Frank.