Neurocomputational Poetics: How the Brain Processes Verbal Art

by Arthur M. Jacobs

Overview

This book introduces a new thrilling field: Neurocomputational Poetics, the scientific ‘marriage’ between cognitive poetics, data science and neuroscience. Its goal is to uncover the secrets of verbal art reception and to explain how readers come to understand and like literary texts. For centuries, verbal art reception has been considered too subjective for quantitative scientific studies and till date many scholars in the humanities and neurosciences alike view literary reading as too complex for accurate computational prediction of the neuronal, experiential and behavioural aspects of reader responses to texts. This book sets out to change this view.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781839996412
Publisher:	Anthem Press
Publication date:	11/11/2025
Series:	Anthem Studies in Bibliotherapy and Well-Being
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Arthur Jacobs is Professor of Experimental and Neurocognitive Psychology at Freie Universität Berlin (FUB). He is (co-)author of more than 250 scientific publications in the fields of reading research, psycholinguistics, affective neuroscience and neurocognitive poetics, among which is the book Gehirn und Gedicht (Brain and Poetry, 2011; with R. Schrott).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Preface; 1. Introduction: The Two Boons of an Unnatural Daily Activity; 2. Models and Methods; 3. Text Analysis; 4. Reader and Reading Act Analysis; 5. Computational Poetics I: Simple Applications; 6. Computational Poetics II: Sophisticated Applications; 7. Neurocomputational Poetics I: Upper Route Studies; 8. Neurocomputational Poetics II: Lower Route Studies; 9. Conclusions; References; Index

Editorial Reviews

This is a seminal and ground-breaking work that will hold a special interest for psychology students, researchers and practitioners in the field of cognitive psychology and verbal communications. — Midwest

Jacobs’ book appears as a living creature still in progress, making the content believable for the readers and applicable in their own research experience. [...] It actually shows how literature – weaving together  the  various  branches  of  knowledge – offers  a  way  to  better  understand  the  human nature in its fascinating complexity and the whole material world determining and surrounding it. This might certainly seem an immeasurable goal, far beyond all hope of achievement, but it is exactly thanks to this new transdisciplinary perspective ... that nowadays literature is so alive.—Enthymema

“This is a game-changing book which opens up the middle ground of reading, finding ways of connecting the details of the text to the cognitive and neurological structures which we bring as readers, all the way from individual sounds up to whole plot structures. It combines brain science, linguistics, and literary criticism and throughout demonstrates how experimental methods can open up new ways of understanding old problems.” — Nigel Fabb, University of Strathclyde, UK.

"A pioneer in the study of how literary works stir our emotions and transport us to faraway worlds, Jacobs recounts his decades-long personal journey that, through neuroscience and computational linguistics, culminates in a fascinating account of how this magic happens." — Emanuele Castano, University of Trento and The Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, CNR, Italy

“How does the brain make books light up so that we can’t stop reading? Arthur Jacobs embarks on a scientific journey to the principles of poetics and reveals nothing less than the natural history of our passions. His extraordinary neurocomputational approach makes this book a worthy successor to Roman Jacobson’s Poetics in the 21st Century.” — Gerhard Lauer, Book and Reading Studies, Gutenberg University of Mainz

From the Publisher