Introduction: the literary history of distraction
Mind wandering: forms of distraction in the eighteenth-century essay
Lapses of concentration: distracted vigilance and the female mind
Scattered attention: distraction and the rhythm of cognitive overload
Fixated attention: the Gothic pathology of single-minded focus
Divided attention: characterization and cognitive richness in Jane Austen
Coda: history of mind and literary neuroscience.
Cover; Half-title; Title; Copyright; Contents; Preface; Introduction: The Literary History of Distraction; The Unifocal and the Multifocal; The Rise of the Distracted Character; Attention, Distraction, and Enlightenment Philosophy of Mind; A Swiftly Tilting Madness; Categorizing Distraction; 1 Mind Wandering: Forms of Distraction in the Eighteenth-Century Essay; Distraction and the Eighteenth-Century Essay; The Rhetoric of Attention: Appealing to Pathos and Brevitas; The Essay as a Tool of Focus; Training Attention to Attention; Strengthening Focus: Repetition and Dramatic Irony.
Economies of AttentionThe History of Attention Span; 2 Lapses of Concentration: Distracted Vigilance and the Female Mind; Environment and Mind: Urban Diversion and the Distracted Brain; The Problem of a Soft Female Mind; Sex, Environment, and the Multifocal Coquette; The Challenges of Situational Awareness; Philosophizing Multiplicity: Cognitive Bottlenecks and Sorting Gloves; Strained Omniscience and the Distracted Heroine; The Crowded Syntax of Sexual Inattention; "Might as Well Be Passed Over as Read": Indulging the Diverted Reader.
3 Scattered Attention: Distraction and the Rhythm of Cognitive OverloadRhythms of Narrative, Rhythms of Mind; Tristram's Style and the Scattered Rhythms of Cognitive Overload; Susannah and the Vexed Situation of Madam Reader; The Anatomy of Parallel Processing; The Sermon and Rhythms of Distraction; Hobbyhorses and the Individual Beat of Interest; Irregular Distraction: The Tempo of Cognitive Overload; Rhythms of the Brain: Creativity and the Timing of Distraction; 4 Fixated Attention: The Gothic Pathology of Single-Minded Focus; Microscope and Mind.
Scientific Metaphors and the Madness of AttentionThe Politics and Poetics of Fixation; Involuntary Attention: A Multifocal Selective Blindness; Sympathy and the Bene.ts of Distraction; Rewriting Suspense: Interruption and the Gothic Sublime; Fixation and the Science of Obsession; 5 Divided Attention: Characterization and Cognitive Richness in Jane Austen; The Power of Multitasking in Pride and Prejudice; The Singular Importance of Inattentive Characters; Mr. Hurst: The Limited Capacity of the Undivided Mind; Mrs. Jenkinson: Narrow Bandwidth and the Creation of Depth.
Lydia and Miss Bingley: Caricaturing Cognitive VacancyThe Dangers of Too Much Attention; Distraction as Liveliness of Mind; Mary Bennet: Hyperfocus and Cognitive Immobility; Lady Catherine de Bourgh: The Problem of Excessive Vigilance; Elizabeth Bennet: The Bene.ts of Diversion; Characterizing Reading: Maps of Distraction and Interest; Coda: History of Mind and Literary Neuroscience; Interdisciplinarity: From Theory to Practice; Literary Attention: An fMRI Study of Reading Jane Austen; The Value of Literary History; Notes; Bibliography; Index; A; B; C; D; E; F; G; H; I; J; K; L; M; N; O; P; R.
