An innovative account that brings together cognitive science, ethnography, and literary history to examine patterns of "mindreading" in a wide range of literary works.

For over four thousand years, writers have been experimenting with what cognitive scientists call "mindreading": constantly devising new social contexts for making their audiences imagine complex mental states of characters and narrators. In The Secret Life of Literature, Lisa Zunshine uncovers these mindreading patterns, which have, until now, remained invisible to both readers and critics, in works ranging from The Epic of Gilgamesh to Invisible Man. Bringing together cognitive science, ethnography, and literary studies, this engaging book transforms our understanding of literary history.

Central to Zunshine's argument is the exploration of mental states "embedded" within each other, as, for instance, when Ellison's Invisible Man is aware of how his white Communist Party comrades pretend not to understand what he means, when they want to reassert their position of power. Paying special attention to how race, class, and gender inform literary embedments, Zunshine contrasts this dynamic with real-life patterns studied by cognitive and social psychologists. She also considers community-specific mindreading values and looks at the rise and migration of embedment patterns across genres and national literary traditions, noting particularly the use of deception, eavesdropping, and shame as plot devices. Finally, she investigates mindreading in children's literature. Stories for children geared toward different stages of development, she shows, provide cultural scaffolding for initiating young readers into a long-term engagement with the secret life of literature.

Lisa Zunshine is Bush-Holbrook Professor of English at the University of Kentucky, a Guggenheim Fellow, and the author of Why We Read Fiction, Strange Concepts and the Stories They Make Possible, Getting Inside Our Head.

An innovative account that brings together cognitive science and literary history to examine patterns of "mindreading" in a range of literary works.


In The Secret Life of Literature, Lisa Zunshine brings together cognitive science and literary history to trace patterns of "mindreading" in works ranging from The Epic of Gilgamesh to Invisible Man. Zunshine shows that novels, plays, and narrative poems continue to find new ways to make their readers engage in imaginative construction of mental states: their own, the characters,' the narrator's, and the author's. Crucially, these mental states-thoughts, feelings, and intentions-are "embedded" within each other. For instance, Ellison's Invisible Man is aware of how his white Party comrades pretend not to understand what he means, when they want to reassert their position of power. Race, class, and gender inform literary embedments, and so do unspoken cultural rules about the ethics of mindreading.

Social situations involving complex embedments, Zunshine points out, occur in literature much more often than they do in everyday life. They are the cornerstone of literary imagination, and yet they are largely invisible to readers and critics. Zunshine examines specific patterns of mindreading, showing readers how to recognize them; explores the evolutionary and neurocognitive foundations of embedment; considers community-specific mindreading values; and looks at the migration of mindreading across genres and national literary traditions, paying particular attention to the use of deception, eavesdropping, and shame as plot devices. Finally, she investigates mindreading in children's literature.

List of Illustrations vii
Preface ix
1 The Secret Life of Literature 1
2 Mindreading and Social Status 59
3 "Deep" History: Evolutionary and Neurocognitive Foundations of Complex Embedment 99
4 Cultural History: Ideologies of Mind 113
5 Literary History: The Importance of Being Deceived 141
6 Embedded Mental States in Children's Literature 193
Conclusion: On the Future of the "Secret Life" of Literature 219
Notes 223
Bibliography 273
Index 305