Carrying neoclassicism back into today's critical debates, this study considers the cognitive underpinnings of the rules of poetic justice, the unities and decorum, underlines their relevance for today's cognitive poetics and traces their influence in the emerging narrative form of the eighteenth-century novel.

Acknowledgements Preface Chapter 1: Neoclassical Poetics and the Rise of the Novel 1.1 Beating the Bounds of the Rules in Incognita 1.2 Manners, Passions, Unities 1.3 Neoclassicism and the Sciences Chapter 2. The Situational Logic of Vraisemblance 2.1. Cognitive Moves 2.2. Successful Solutions 2.3. Vraisemblance Now I: Poetic Justice Chapter 3: Samuel Richardson and the Project of Poetic Justice 3.1. Virtue Rewarded 3.2. Altruistic Punishers in B-Hall 3.3 Pamela - Shamela - Anti-Pamela Chapter 4: The Trials of Clarissa 4.1 Editing the Social Contract 4.2 Lovelace's Happy Endings 4.3. Poetic Justice at the Limits Chapter 5: Ann Radcliffe and the Abdication of the Superpunisher 5.1 Comeuppance Clockworks 5.2 Enter the Uncanny 5.3 The Supernatural and Superpunishers II: The Unities Chapter 6: The Best Possible Storyworld: Johnson's Rasselas 6.1 Rasselas, the Imagination and the Unities 6.2 Event Cognition, Spatialization and the Conceptual Shape of the Storyworld 6.3 Closure in Abissinia Chapter 7: Utopian Reasoning in Mercier's L'An 2440 and Madden's Memoirs of the Twentieth Century 7.1 Poetics and Politics 7.2 The Cognitive Estrangements of Utopia 7.3 The Idea of Progress and Intertemporal Bargaining in Utopian Fiction 7.4 A Unified Utopia Chapter 8: The Dramatic Passages of The Castle of Otranto 8.1. Where the Bodies Are 8.2 The Return of Racine 8.3 Embodied Experience in the Novel III: Decorum Chapter 9. Henry Fielding's Probability Design 9.1 9.2 Decorum and Surprise 9.3 A Hero Chapter 10. The Female Quixote and the Probability of Romance 10.1. The Querelle de Miss Groves 10.2 Educating Readers 10.3 Arabella's Wager Chapter 11. John Cleland vs. the Novel 11.1. Building a Social World in Mrs Mercier's Academy 11.2. The Predictable Novel 11.3. Love, Duty and the End of Curiosity Conclusion: Explorations in the Prehistory of Cognitive Poetics Bibliography

Karin Kukkonen's important book proposes several innovative theses. It argues that European neoclassicist literary theory was an early incarnation of present-day cognitive poetics, that the rules governing a given literary genre during a definite historical period, in this case seventeenthand eighteenth-century neoclassicist poetics of drama, were equally applied to other genres, and that, consequently, the eighteenth-century English literary wave called "the rise of the novel" was deeply indebted to the neoclassicist views on literature ... To conclude, Kukkonen's book represents the promising debut of a very talented young scholar and will certainly enjoy the success it deserves.

"The book radiates from a vigorous hypothesis, that of a kinship between eighteenth-century neoclassical poetics and present-day cognitive poetics. Karin Kukkonen, whose solid background in contemporary literary theory and textual criticism is indisputable, substantiates her persuasive argument with a wealth of case studies from eighteenth-century English and French novels. The bringing together of neoclassical poetics, the emergent novel and modern cognitive poetics proves to be a winning strategy for extending our knowledge of eighteenth century literature and culture."--Rosamaria Loretelli, Università di Napoli Federico II, Vice-President of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies "This book sets out to rethink traditional poetics in a cognitive perspective. Karin Kukkonen's account of the way the Aristotelian rules were adjusted for the eighteenth-century novel reveals what is - and always was - at stake in problematic concepts such as verisimilitude and narrative logic. A state-of-the-art study which recalibrates both the history of the novel and the understanding of poetics as a cognitive discipline."--Terence Cave, Emeritus Professor of French Literature and Emeritus Research Fellow, St John's College, Oxford "In an unconventional reappraisal of neoclassical poetics, Kukkonen considers how literary theory from the early modern period prefigures contemporary cognitive approaches and stands in close conversation with the eighteenth-century novel: a groundbreaking perspective on literary history at the crossroad of science and humanities."--Françoise Lavocat, Professor of Comparative Literature, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris "This is a meticulously edited, generously documented, and profoundly erudite book...Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty." --P.D. Collington, Niagara University, Choice "Karin Kukkonen's important book proposes several innovative theses. It argues that European neoclassicist literary theory was an early incarnation of present-day cognitive poetics, that the rules governing a given literary genre during a definite historical period, in this case seventeenthand eighteenth-century neoclassicist poetics of drama, were equally applied to other genres, and that, consequently, the eighteenth-century English literary wave called "the rise of the novel" was deeply indebted to the neoclassicist views on literature ... To conclude, Kukkonen's book represents the promising debut of a very talented young scholar and will certainly enjoy the success it deserves." -Thomas Pavel, Modern Philology "The author terms her synthesis of neoclassical criticism and brain-body science a "cognitive poetics", but this is too modest; it is also a literary history, a theory of reception, and a demonstration of how heuristics such as situational logic, comeuppance clockworks, and Bayesian cognition can benefit literaty studies. Highlights include chapters on cheater detection in Richarson's Clarissa, cognitive estrangement in Utopian fiction, and free indirect perception in Walpole's The Castle of Otranto. This is a meticulously edited, generously documented, and profoundly erudite book." -- P.D. Collington, Niagara University, CHOICE

Selling point: Provides a thorough introduction to the neoclassical debates of how literature is shaped in unison with the thinking and feeling mind Selling point: Neoclassicism is reconsidered in light of social cognition, embodied cognition and predictive cognition Selling point: Neoclassical theory is connected to the praxis of eighteenth-century writers who shaped the emerging narrative form of the novel Selling point: Gives a unique connection between neoclassical criticism and the rise of the novel Selling point: Applies current cognitive approaches to literature through a historically distant approach

Karin Kukkonen is Professor in Comparative Literature at the University of Oslo. She is a specialist in cognitive approaches to literature and narratology. She has published on comics and graphic novels (Contemporary Comics Storytelling, 2013), embodied and probabilistic cognitive approaches to literary narrative, as well as on the eighteenth-century novel. From 2010-2013, she was a Balzan Postdoctoral Research Fellow at St John's College, University of Oxford.

Selling point: Provides a thorough introduction to the neoclassical debates of how literature is shaped in unison with the thinking and feeling mind Selling point: Neoclassicism is reconsidered in light of social cognition, embodied cognition and predictive cognition Selling point: Neoclassical theory is connected to the praxis of eighteenth-century writers who shaped the emerging narrative form of the novel Selling point: Gives a unique connection between neoclassical criticism and the rise of the novel Selling point: Applies current cognitive approaches to literature through a historically distant approach