Title: The Divine Cities by Robert Jackson Bennett : analysis of speculative fiction as a vehicle for changing the mind and the world
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2022, vol. 48, iss. 2, pp. 119-135
Extent
119-135
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2022-2-6
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/digilib.77880
Type: Article
Language
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
Speculative literature is an excellent vehicle for questioning the seemingly natural; faith and the shape of reality are two frequently reflected themes in such works. In The Divine Cities trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett, the relationships among deities, known as the Divinities; people; and reality are complex and thought provoking. The fictional world hints significantly at our reality when inverting the assumingly top-down relationship between the divine and the mundane. Based on findings from the cognitive sciences and working with the concept of intersubjectivity and interaction theory, this paper explores the enormous role of intersubjective minds in constructing reality in both the fictional and the real world.
References
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[48] Young, Helen (2016) Race and Popular Fantasy Literature: Habits of Whiteness. London: Routledge.
[49] Zunshine, Lisa (2006) Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
[50] Zylinska, Joanna (2014) Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene. United Kingdom: Open Humanities Press.
[2] Alexander, Niall (2016) Make it matter: City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett. Tor, January 26, 2016. https://tor.com/2016/01/26/book-reviews-city-of-blades-by-robert-jackson-bennett/. Accessed on June 9, 2021.
[3] Apter, T.E. (1982) Fantasy Literature: An Approach to Reality. London and Basingstoke: The Macmillan Press LTD.
[4] Armstrong, Paul B. (2013) How Literature Plays with the Brain: The Neuroscience of Reading and Art. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
[5] Attebery, Brian (1992) Strategies of Fantasy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
[6] Baclawski, K. (2018) The Observer effect. 2018 IEEE Conference on Cognitive and Computational Aspects of Situation Management (CogSIMA), 83–89. https://doi.org/10.1109/COGSIMA.2018.8423983.
[7] Banks, Kathryn, and Timothy Chesters (2018) Movement in Renaissance Literature: Exploring Kinesic Intelligence. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
[8] Bennett, Robert Jackson (2014) City of Stairs. E-book, New York: Broadway Books.
[9] Bennett, Robert Jackson (2016) City of Blades. E-book, London: Jo Fletcher Books.
[10] Bennett, Robert Jackson (2017) City of Miracles. E-book, New York: Broadway Books.
[11] Bolens, Guillemette (2012) The Style of Gestures: Embodiment and Cognition in Literary Narrative. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
[12] Burroway, Janet (2003) Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. New York: Longman.
[13] Caracciolo, Marco (2014) The Experientiality of Narrative: An Enactivist Approach. Berlin: De Gruyter.
[14] Cave, Terence (2016) Thinking with Literature: Towards a Cognitive Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[15] Coltelli, Laura (1990) Winged Words: American Indian Writers Speak. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
[16] Czyrnyj, Alasdair (2017) City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett. Strange Horizons, January 9, 2017. http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/reviews/city-of-blades-by-robert-jackson-bennett/. Accessed on June 7, 2021.
[17] De Jaegher, Hanne, Ezequiel Di Paolo and Gallagher Shaun (2010) Can social interaction constitute social cognition? Trends in Cognitive Sciences 14 (10), 441–447.
[18] Ekman, Stefan (2016) Urban fantasy: A literature of the unseen. Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 27 (3), 452–69.
[19] Elmore, Jonathan, et al. (2020) Fiction and the Sixth Mass Extinction: Narrative in an Era of Loss. Lanham: Lexington Books.
[20] Farmer, Nancy (2004) The Sea of Trolls. New York: Atheneum.
[21] Gottschall, Jonathan (2012) The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. E-book, Boston: Mariner Books.
[22] Hoffman, Donald (2019) The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes. E-book, New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company.
[23] Hogan, Patrick Colm (2003) Cognitive Science, Literature, and the Arts: A Guide for Humanists. London: Routledge.
[24] Holland, Norman N. (2009) Literature and the Brain. Gainesville: The PsyArt Foundation.
[25] Hopf, Ted (2009) Identity relations and the Sino-Soviet split. In: by Abdelal, Rawi and Yoshiko M. Herrera and Alastair Iain Johnston and Rose McDermott (eds.) Measuring Identity: A Guide for Social Scientists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 279–315.
[26] Keen, Susanne (2007) Empathy and the Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[27] Levy, Michael, and Farah Mendlesohn (2016) Children's Fantasy Literature: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[28] Lewis, C. S. (2002) On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
[29] Małecki, Wojciech, et al. (2019) Human Minds and Animal Stories: How Narratives Make Us Care About Other Species. London: Routledge.
[30] Mathews, Richard (2002) Fantasy: The Liberation of Imagination. London: Routledge.
[31] Maurer, Danielle (2017) Book review: City of Miracles. Daniellemaurer, June 8, 2017. https://daniellemaurer.com/blog/2017/5/26/book-review-city-of-miracles. Accessed on June 7, 2021.
[32] Munroe, Paul T (2019) Intersubjectivity. In: Ritzer, George and Chris Rojek (eds.) The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. Chicester: JohnWiley & Sons, Ltd, 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405165518.wbeosi067.pub2.
[33] Nikolajeva, Maria (2014) Reading for Learning: Cognitive Approaches to Children's Literature. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
[34] Oatley, Keith (1999) Why fiction may be twice as true as fact: Fiction as cognitive and emotional simulation. Review of General Psychology 3 (2), 101–117.
[35] Oziewicz, Marek (2015) Justice in Young Adult Speculative Fiction: A Cognitive Reading. London: Routledge.
[36] Oziewicz, Marek (2017) Speculative fiction. Oxfordre, March 29, 2017. https://ox-fordre.com/literature/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.001.0001/acrefore-9780190201098-e-78. Accessed on November 8, 2021.
[37] Paulson Steve, Donald D. Hoffman, and Suzanne O'Sullivan (2019) Reality is not as it seems. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Special Issue: Conversations on the Nature of Reality 1458, 1–21.
[38] Rieder, Jonh (2008) Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.
[39] robertjacksonbennett.com. n.d. https://www.robertjacksonbennett.com/. Accessed on September 13, 2022.
[40] Seth, Anil (2017) Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality. TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, April 2017. http://ted.com/talks/anil_seth_your_brain_hallucinates_your_conscious_reality. Accessed on May 19, 2021.
[41] Sheehan, Jason (2014) God is dead in this "City Of Stairs". Several gods, in fact. Npr.org, September 9, 2014. http://npr.org/2014/09/09/343144419/god-is-dead-in-this-city-of-stairs-several-gods-in-fact?t=1620735270527. Accessed on June 9, 2021.
[42] Sheehan, Jason (2016) In "City Of Blades," The gods are dead. So what happens next? Npr.org, January 30, 2016. http://npr.org/2016/01/30/463861001/in-city-of-blades-the-gods-are-dead-so-what-happens-next. Accessed on June 9, 2021.
[43] Sheehan, Jason (2017) An old soldier is back in action in "City Of Miracles". npr.org, 7 May, 2017. https://npr.org/2017/05/07/526913232/an-old-soldier-is-back-in-action-in-city-of-miracles. Accessed on June 9, 2021.
[44] Tolkien, J. R. R (1966) On fairy stories. In: Lewis, C.S. (ed.) Essays Presented to Charles Williams. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 38–89.
[45] Trexler, Adam (2015) Anthropocene Fictions: The Novel in a Time of Climate Change. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
[46] Wiley, Norbert (2003) The self as self-fulfilling prophecy. Symbolic Interaction 26 (4), 501– 513
[47] Yeager, Erica Owens (2016) Symbolic interaction theory. In: Shehan, Constance L. (ed.) The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Family Studies. Hoboken: JohnWiley & Sons, 1–6.
[48] Young, Helen (2016) Race and Popular Fantasy Literature: Habits of Whiteness. London: Routledge.
[49] Zunshine, Lisa (2006) Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
[50] Zylinska, Joanna (2014) Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene. United Kingdom: Open Humanities Press.