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HANNAH CHAPELLE WOJCIEHOWSKI, VITTORIO GALLESE, Introduction

pretation does not necessitate acceptance of scientific methodology;
adoption of a specified set of analytic concepts or a prescribed inter-
pretive model; or adoption of a common groundwork for explana-
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tion.” Far from reducing a literary work to a dataset, Easterlin’s re-
markable readings of literary works shed light on their extraordinary
complexity, and enhance our understanding, as well as enjoyment, of
that complexity.
In a section of her book entitled “What Is Literature For?” East-
erlin proposes that

[o]ver the course of recent hominid evolution, the arts have manifested
themselves in a variety of forms as expensive behaviors, worthy of a
great investment of time and effort for groups and individuals without
extraneous time and resources. Whether the arts evolved primarily out
of metaphysical needs or within the overlapping activities of ritual and
play, the message seems fairly clear as we look to the anthropological
record: in the line connecting human prehistory and human history
the arts exhibit enduring importance. (33)

For Easterlin, art and literature are not only cultural products of the
human mind, but also evolved skills and tools that emerged in the
cognitive niche described by Tooby and DeVore. While that observa-
tion is not the substance of Easterlin’s embodied cognitive readings of
literary works, it is her springboard.
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In his recent book, cognitive literary theorist Michele Cometa
raises the same question that Easterlin does: namely, what is literature
for? Why is it necessary, and in what sense do stories help us to live?
Stories help us to live, Cometa argues, because they help us to over-
come our constitutive limits. The human being, imperfect and poten-
tially inadequate to the challenges of the world, compensates for its

6
Nancy Easterlin, A Biocultural Approach to Literary Theory and Interpretation
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2012), 20.
7
Michele Cometa, Perché le storie ci aiutano a vivere. La le eratura necessaria,
trans. V.G. (Milano: Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2017).

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