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Pragmatist Realism: The Cognitive Paradigm in American Realist Texts
Pragmatist Realism The Cognitive Paradigm in American Realist Texts Author:Sami Ludwig "An extraordinary critical analysis of the realist movement. Richly informed by philosophy and history."Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside, editor of The Columbia History of the American Novel Literary realists have often been dismissed by later writers of the modernist and post-structuralist schools for thei... more »r lack of aesthetic sophistication and etymological naïvete. In Pragmatist Realism, Sämi Ludwig argues that the artistic quality of realist texts is better appreciated by approaching them from a cognitive perspective, rather than from a linguistic or formalist one. Ludwig notes that literary realism arose from the same cultural scene as the pragmatist philosophy of William James and Charles Sanders Peirce, and that cognitive psychology built upon pragmatist philosophy. He argues that the aim of realist writers, like that of cognitive scientists, is to track the arc of learning from experiences. Ludwig contends that this cognitive perspective is a useful corrective to other approaches to literary criticism that focus on textual hermeneutics. He argues further that the cognitive paradigm can enhance our understanding of literary representation, not only in realist works by Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Charles Chesnutt, and others, but in literature generally. "Pragmatist Realism offers an unprecedented synthesis of the cognitive paradigm, stretching from first-generation pragmatists, through Piaget and other cognitive psychologists, to recent research in cognitive science. Ludwigs argumentthat American literary realism can be illuminated by being placed in the context of this cognitive paradigmis original and persuasive."Jonathan Levin, Fordham University, author of The Poetics of Transition« less