Wonderworks: Literary invention and the science of stories

Author: Angus Fletcher

Number of Pages: 480

Literature is a technology like any other. And the writers we revere – fromHomer to Shakespeare, Austen to Ferrante – each made a unique technicalbreakthrough that can be viewed as both a narrative and neuroscientific advancement.But literature’s great invention was to address problems we couldnot solve: not how to start a fire or build a boat, but how to live and love; howto maintain courage in the face of death; how to account for the fact that weexist at all. Based on Angus Fletcher’s own research, Wonderworks tells the story of thegreatest literary inventions through the ages, from ancient Mesopotamia tomodern-day America. It draws on cutting-edge neuroscience to demonstratethat the inventions really work: they enrich our lives with joy, hope, courageand energy, and they help our brains heal from grief, loneliness and eventrauma. From ancient Chinese lyrics to nursery rhymes and fairy tales, from slave narrativesto contemporary TV shows, Wonderworks walks us through theevolution of literature’s crucial blueprints, and offers us a new understandingof its power.