CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Prologue

1   Neuroscience and Narrative Theory

Language, the Brain, and Cognitive Narratology

Figuration in Narration and Cognition

Lived Worlds and Narrative Worldmaking

Natural and Unnatural Narratives

2   The Temporality of Narrative and the Decentered Brain

Anticipation and Retrospection in Stories and the Brain

Temporalities of Integration in Narration, Cognition, and Reading

The Neuroscience of Memory and Forgetting

The Temporality of Intersubjectivity and Emotion

3   Action, Embodied Cognition, and the As-If of Narrative Figuration

The Action-Perception Circuit and the Figurations of Narrative

Grounded Cognition, Graded Grounding, and the Paradoxes of Simulation

Embodied and Disembodied Metaphor

Interactions of Action in Narrative and Narration

Narrative Affordances

4   Neuroscience and the Social Powers of Narrative

Empathy, Identification, and the Doubling of Self and Other

Collaboration, Shared Intentionality, and Coupled Brains

Distributed Cognition and the Social Life of Stories

Stories as a Cognitive Archive: What Is It Like to Be Conscious?

Epilogue

Notes

Works Cited

Index