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Paleopoetics : the evolution of the preliterate imagination
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Paleopoetics : the evolution of the preliterate imagination

by Christopher Collins

Paleopoetics explores the evolutionary origins of human cognition and the development of narrative, play, and imagination. This study examines how prehistoric sensorimotor skills shaped linguistic cognition and the frameworks of literary thought.

Accession 5876 ISBN 9780231160926 Publisher Columbia University Press
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TAGS
Curated Derived
Animals Communication Culture Education Emotions Evolution Human Evolution Imagination Language Life Sciences Linguistics Literature Science Social Sciences The Brain
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on_shelf
True
position_updated_at
2026-06-10 09:06
orientation
vertical
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Physical

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Hard Back
dimensions
229.00 (H) × 157.00 (W) × 25.00 (T) mm
spine_text
none captured

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Book form
LOCATION HISTORY
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Identity

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Paleopoetics : the evolution of the preliterate imagination
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9686
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5876
vernon_slug
paleopoetics-the-evolution-of-the-preliterate-imagination-christopher-collins

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isbn_issn→ isbn (when valid)
9780231160926

Descriptive

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2013
object_type
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brief_description
Collins proposes reading literature using cognitive skills that predate language and writing. These include the brain's capacity to perceive the visible world, store its images, and retrieve them later to form simulated mental events. Long before humans could share stories through speech, they perceived, remembered, and imagined their own inner narratives. Drawing on a wide range of evidence, Collins builds an evolutionary bridge between humans' development of sensorimotor skills and their achievement of linguistic cognition, bringing current scientific perspective to such issues as the structure of narrative, the distinction between metaphor and metonymy, the relation of rhetoric to poetics, the relevance of performance theory to reading, the difference between orality and writing, and the nature of play and imagination.

Subjects & people

authors→ author (initial fill only)
Christopher Collins
tags→ tags
Science, Psychology, Life sciences, Literature, Philology, Social sciences, Civilisation, Sociology, Language and languages, Communication, Linguistics, Anthropology, Fiction, Evolution (Biology), Biology, Education, Vertebrates, Chordata, Animals, Human beings, Hominids, Primates, Mammals, Imagination, Literacy
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