OK, it’s time to get to grips with Milton’s ‘L’Allegro’. In my previous post I tuned in to a difference of opinion in the pages of Trends in Cognitive Sciences. The question was whether there may be new evidence to connect a tendency towards negative self-generated thoughts (summed up as ‘neuroticism’) with a capacity for creative thinking. As usual I thought: what can we learn about this from literature? I turned to Milton’s poem ‘Il Penseroso’, which describes the attractions of the pensive, melancholic life, and the sort of poetic creativity it might enable. It became apparent that ‘Il Penseroso’ was only half the story, and that its companion ‘L’Allegro’ (about being lively and mirthful) offered another part of the picture. So here’s a read-through, trying to see how Milton develops this alternative vision, and most of all how the dialogue (or gap) between the two poems may be where the most innovative thinking about thinking occurs.

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I followed that post up in another way too. As suggested by Simon in a comment, I read Francis O’Gorman’s book Worrying: A Literary and Cultural History. I found it very interesting, and enjoyed it too. O’Gorman focuses on the literature and cultural history of the 19th and 20th centuries, and on his own experience, and offers a positive view of worry: it is a side-effect, and perhaps a positive facet, of the way human reason has to work in a world of waning faith. When there are fewer certainties, the mind has to work harder or at least differently, and worry is one of its exercises. There’s no turn to cognitive science in the book, and no association between worry and creativity. It seems that our tendency for these debilitating self-generated thoughts lends itself to a lot of varied explanation.

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Hence loathed ,
Of Cerberus, and blackest midnight born,
In Stygian Cave forlorn
‘Mongst horrid shapes, and shreiks, and sights unholy,
Find out som uncouth cell,
Wher brooding darknes spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-Raven sings;
There under Ebon shades, and low-brow’d Rocks,
As ragged as thy Locks,
In dark desert ever dwell.
But com thou Goddes fair and free,
In Heav’n ycleap’d ,
And by men, heart-easing Mirth,
Whom lovely Venus at a birth
With two sister Graces more
To Ivy-crowned Bacchus bore;
Or whether (as som Sager sing)
The frolick Wind that breathes the Spring,
Zephir with Aurora playing,
As he met her once a Maying,
There on Beds of Violets blew,
And fresh-blown Roses washt in dew,
Fill’d her with thee a daughter fair,
So bucksom, blith, and .
Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful Jollity,
Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles,
Nods, and Becks, and Wreathed Smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe’s cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrincled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Com, and trip it as ye go
On the light fantastick toe,
And in thy right hand lead with thee,
The Mountain Nymph, sweet ;
And if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crue
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free;
To hear the Lark begin his flight,
And singing startle the dull night,
From his watch-towre in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to com in spight of sorrow,
And at my window bid good morrow,
Through the Sweet-Briar, or the Vine,
Or the twisted Eglantine.
While the Cock with lively din,
Scatters the rear of darknes thin,
And to the stack, or the Barn dore,
Stoutly struts his Dames before,
Oft list’ning how the Hounds and horn,
Chearly rouse the slumbring morn,
From the side of som Hoar Hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill.
Som time walking not unseen
By Hedge-row Elms, on Hillocks green,
Right against the Eastern gate,
Wher the great Sun begins his state,
Rob’d in flames, and Amber light,
The clouds in thousand Liveries dight.
While the Plowman neer at hand,
Whistles ore the Furrow’d Land,
And the Milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the Mower whets his sithe,
And every Shepherd tells his tale
Under the Hawthorn in the dale.
Streit mine eye hath caught
Whilst the Lantskip round it measures,
Russet Lawns, and Fallows Gray,
Where the nibling flocks do stray,
Mountains on whose barren brest
The labouring clouds do often rest:
Meadows trim with Daisies pide,
Shallow Brooks, and Rivers wide.
Towers, and Battlements it sees
Boosom’d high in tufted Trees,
Wher perhaps som beauty lies,
The of neighbouring eyes.
Hard by, a Cottage chimney smokes,
From betwixt two aged Okes,
Where Corydon and Thyrsis met,
Are at their savory dinner set
Of Hearbs, and other Country Messes,
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses;
And then in haste her Bowre she leaves,
With Thestylis to bind the Sheaves;
Or if the earlier season lead
To the tann’d Haycock in the Mead,
Som times with secure delight
The up-land Hamlets will invite,
When the merry Bells ring round,
And the jocond sound
To many a youth, and many a maid,
Dancing in the Chequer’d shade;
And young and old com forth to play
On a Sunshine Holyday,
Till the live-long day-light fail,
Then to the Spicy Nut-brown Ale,
With ,
How Faery Mab the junkets eat,
She was pincht, and pull’d she sed,
And he by Friars Lanthorn led
Tells how the drudging Goblin swet
To ern his Cream-bowle duly set,
When in one night, ere glimps of morn,
His shadowy Flale hath thresh’d the Corn
That ten day-labourers could not end,
Then lies him down the Lubbar Fend.
And stretch’d out all the Chimney’s length,
Basks at the fire his hairy strength;
And Crop-full out of dores he flings,
Ere the first Cock his Mattin rings.
Thus don the Tales, to bed they creep,
By whispering Windes soon lull’d asleep.
Towred Cities please us then,
And the busie humm of men,
Where ,
In weeds of Peace high triumphs hold,
With store of Ladies, whose bright eies
Rain influence, and judge the prise
Of Wit, or Arms, while both contend
To win her Grace, whom all commend.
There let Hymen oft appear
In Saffron robe, with Taper clear,
And pomp, and feast, and revelry,
With mask, and antique Pageantry,
Such sights as youthfull Poets dream
On Summer eeves by haunted stream.
Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonsons learned Sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespear ,
Warble his native Wood-notes wilde,
And ever against eating Cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian Aires,
Married to immortal verse,
Such as the meeting soul may pierce
In notes, with many a winding bout
Of lincked sweetnes long drawn out,
With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running;
Untwisting all the chains that ty
The .
That Orpheus self may heave his head
From golden slumber on a bed
Of heapt Elysian flowres, and hear
Such streins as would have won the ear
Of Pluto, to have quite set free
His half regain’d Eurydice.
These delights, if thou canst give,
Mirth with thee, I mean to live.

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In my previous post I found Perkins, Pickering, et als, disagreeing about whether there were positive and negative manifestations of self-generated thought. Milton stages something like a disagreement on related territory. However, it is not really a disagreement. The medium of the paired, responsive poems offers a way of addressing the problem. Human achievements of various kinds require seclusion and discipline, but also (paradoxically) engagement and interaction. This isn’t something (the Allegro-Penseroso duality implies) that resolves or unifies; it’s a creative tension.

* Adam M. Perkins, Danilo Arnone, Jonathan Smallwood, and Dean Mobbs, ‘Thinking Too Much: Self-Generated Thought as the Engine of Neuroticism’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19 (2015), 492-8.

Having promised here that impulsivity would be a theme – perhaps the theme – of 2016, it’s a bit odd that I should be posting about neuroticism. This may tell you the truth about me. It also reflects a wish to write a longish post after a run of, generally, briefer ones. And this topic has been on my mind ever since the Perkins et al. essay came out.
      They aim to link up positive and negative manifestations of ‘self-generated thought’ (SGT), giving more scientific foundations, in effect, to the stereotype of the neurotic artists. The idea is that debilitating sensitivity to possible threats, the tendency to think (perhaps uncontrollably) about things that are not present or imminent, and the ability to imagine, are all linked.
      The Default Mode Network (DMN) has been mentioned in this blog before (here and here). This is a set of brain regions that are active even when there are no stimuli to be processed. Some propose that this network, in the forms of dreams, daydreams, plans, and imaginings, is where our minds put us in the heart of the observed world. The DMN helps us tell the stories we need to tell to understand our relationships to past, present, and future.
      Perkins et al. argue that we now have substantial reasons (and they cite various studies to make the point) to see neuroticism and creativity, and other characteristics (some desirable, some not) as well, as the work of the same mental systems. SGT is obviously a thing to be treasured, the result of an amazing process of evolution. It can, though, breed unhappiness.
      In conclusion, Perkins et al, say that ‘neuroticism is one of the most intriguing personality features because its functional correlates capture aspects of the human condition at both beneficial and detrimental ends of the continuum… because SGT allows us to imagine realities different to way they are right now, we argue that it underpins our capacity to solve problems in creative and original ways’.
      Now, one of the interesting things about this essay is that (to be frank) it tells me something I might have suspected. I mean, of course I am ready to believe that my own tendency to worry is a sign that I am special. The point for the authors, though, is to argue for testable theories as to why this might be the case beyond my glib intuition.

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* Alan D. Pickering, Luke D. Smillie, and Colin G. DeYoung, ‘Neurotic Individuals are not Creative Thinkers’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20 (2016), 1-2.
* Adam M. Perkins, Danilo Arnone, Jonathan Smallwood, and Dean Mobbs, ‘Response to Pickering et al.’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20 (2016), 2-3.

Not everyone is convinced: Pickering et al. weigh in against the main premises of the neurotic-creative link (which caused a bit of a media hubbub). They cite studies that present evidence to the contrary, and they also point to evidence that neurotic traits may be linked to other areas of the brain (the amygdala and insula). They’re pretty categorical that the links made are unwarranted, and that geniuses have achieved their creative feats in spite of neurotic tendencies, not because of them.
      Perkins et al. exercise their right to reply, and maintain that there is a fundamental similarity because ‘they all depend on the capacity to represent information that is distinct from the perceptual environment in which the cognition occurs’, whereas ‘the differences depend on the different sources of information that are integrated’. They don’t (it seems to me) shed doubt on the experiments pointing at different causes for neuroticism, but they do get across that SGT is (i) ‘poorly understood’, and (ii) responsible for advantages and disadvantages.
      Where does this leave the fretful literary critic? Well, in my case, it makes me think a bit of Hamlet, in that it seems highly legitimate to see him as a test of whether the capacity to imagine more than the situation demands brings benefit (in that he has a special, heightened consciousness of the morals and the genre of revenge) or the opposite (in that he is debilitated to the point of nausea).
      It also makes me think about Milton’s great poem ‘Il Penseroso’, in which a pensive character is described. The poem is a foil to another, ‘L’Allegro’, in which a lively, impulsive character is described. It’s long, but it’s full of pointed thoughts about how creativity relates to certain characteristic ways of thinking. (As in other long quotations in this blog you’ll find annotation if you however your mouse or prod your finger at highlighted words.)
      Before launching into it, however, there are two things to be said: one is that the psychological characteristic that dominates ‘Il Penseroso’ is melancholy, and that is not the same thing as neuroticism. In Robert Burton’s famous Anatomy of Melancholy many qualities of melancholy do sound like the characteristics of neuroticism (skittish, uncontrollable thoughts; a disposition towards the negative, etc.), and Hamlet surely belongs to both camps. However, the intersection isn’t perfect and I must not pretend it is.
      The other thing to say is that, as my discussion of ‘Il Penseroso’ grew, it proved inseparable from ‘L’Allegro’, so I will be back to talk about that in another post. What Milton in these poems knows about neuroticism, SGT, and indeed impulsivity, happens in dialogic form. So this topic will be back.

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Il Penseroso

Hence vain deluding ,
The brood of folly without father bred,
How little you bested,
Or fill the fixed mind with all your toyes;
Dwell in som idle brain,
And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,
As thick and numberless
As the gay motes that people the Sun Beams,
Or likest hovering dreams
The fickle Pensioners of Morpheus train.
But hail thou Goddes, sage and holy,
Hail divinest ,
Whose Saintly visage is too bright
To hit the Sense of human sight;
And therfore to our weaker view,
Ore laid with black staid Wisdoms hue.
Black, but such as in esteem,
Prince Memnons sister might beseem,
Or that Starr’d Ethiope Queen that strove
To set her beauties praise above
The Sea Nymphs, and their powers offended.
Yet thou art higher far descended,
Thee bright-hair’d Vesta long of yore,
To Saturn bore;
His daughter she (in Saturns raign,
Such mixture was not held a stain).
Oft in glimmering Bowres, and glades
He met her, and in secret shades
Of woody Ida’s inmost grove,
While yet there was no fear of Jove.
Com pensive Nun, devout and pure,
Sober, stedfast, and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowing with majestick train,
And sable stole of Cipres Lawn,
Over thy decent shoulders drawn.
Com, but keep thy wonted state,
With eev’n step, and musing gate,
And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy :
There held in holy passion still,
Forget thy self to Marble, till
With a sad downward cast,
Thou fix them on the earth as fast.
And joyn with thee calm Peace, and Quiet,
Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet,
And hears the Muses in a ring,
Ay round about Joves Altar sing.
And adde to these retired leasure,
That in trim Gardens takes his pleasure;
But first, and chiefest, with thee bring,
Him that yon soars on golden wing,
Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne,
The Cherub Contemplation,
And the mute Silence hist along,
‘Less Philomel will daign a Song,
In her sweetest, saddest plight,
Smoothing the rugged brow of night,
While Cynthia checks her Dragon yoke,
Gently o’re th’ accustom’d Oke;
Sweet Bird that shunn’st ,
Most musicall, most melancholy!
Thee Chauntress oft the Woods among,
I woo to hear thy even-Song;
And missing thee, I walk unseen
On the dry smooth-shaven Green,
To behold the wandring Moon,
Riding neer her highest noon,
one that had bin led astray
Through the Heav’ns wide pathles way;
And oft, as if her head she bow’d,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud.
Oft on a Plat of rising ground,
I hear the far-off Curfeu sound,
Over som wide-water’d shoar,
Swinging slow with sullen roar;
Or if the Ayr will not permit,
Som still removed place will fit,
Where glowing Embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom,
Far from all resort of mirth,
Save the Cricket on the hearth,
Or the Belmans drousie charm,
To bless the dores from nightly harm:
Or let my Lamp at midnight hour,
Be seen in som high lonely Towr,
Where I may oft out-watch the Bear,
With thrice great Hermes, or unsphear
The spirit of Plato to unfold

The immortal mind that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook…

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Having aspired to a long post, I have created one. But it is time to move on, long before ‘Il Penseroso’ exhausts itself. It goes on to portray more of the imaginative reach of human creativity, and the speaker dedicates himself to the goddess. More on this soon…

Memory and Intertextuality in Renaissance Literature (Cambridge, 2016). By: Me.

For the last ten years I’ve been working on two main projects. One is an edition of Shakespeare’s Poems that should come out later this year; on that one I’ve been collaborating with Cathy Shrank, who teaches at the University of Sheffield. The other is this book, just out with Cambridge University Press. One thing I’ve realised is that it’s probably better to do one project for the first five years, and then the second project for the next five years. On the other hand, I have also come to think that things come to fruition when they’re ready. I’ve used this blog to announce new publications before and this one’s a big deal for me. Unfortunately I have my usual paranoia about the thought of anyone reading it; I hope that passes. I am enjoying looking at the cover, though: the combination of a picture in my College’s art collection (by Helaine Blumenfeld; it was very kind of her to let me use it), and a sharp design from C.U.P.
      This book is my longest effort (so far) to argue that literature knows something about your brain. I use some ideas from cognitive science to set up some new ways of thinking about how poems remember one another, but I keep coming back to the idea that the poems and plays are themselves essays and experiments on the subject of memory.

Not long ago we had a ‘Strategic Research Review’ in my Faculty: this is a visitation by wise heads in the subject, advising us how to make the most of our research time. One of the questions threw me off balance a bit: they asked how I saw my work fitting into (or not) an idea of ‘Cambridge English’. My first thought was, well, although I know that the subject has an illustrious history at my University, I don’t walk around thinking ‘OK everyone, here’s Cambridge, shedding the light!’. Really not. But I had to acknowledge that one of the things Cambridge is known for, close reading (or just reading closely), is something I do a lot, and which I think is important. My new book includes a lot of close reading, perhaps off-puttingly much, I worry.
      If you’ve read previous posts on this blog you’ve probably seem some pretty lengthy bits of detailed analysis here too. The detail’s important: it’s in the nuances that elusive qualities of our minds can catch the light. The length is important as well. I think that what literature knows about the way we think comes through in processes, not outcomes. It’s not something I feel I can often pin down in a couple of extracted lines. It comes to life as it unfolds over time, and time is a dimension of thought that literature is well equipped to explore.

* Stephen B. Porter and Alysha T. Baker, ‘CSI (Crime Scene Induction): Creating False Memories of Committing Crime’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19 (2015), 716-8.
* Naotsugu Tsuchiya, Melanie Wilke, Stefan Frässle, and Victor A.F. Lamme, ‘No-Report Paradigms: Extracting the True Neural Correlates of Consciousness’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19 (2015), 757-70.
* Catherine Perrodin, Christoph Kayser, Taylor J. Abel, Nikos K. Logothetis, and Christopher I. Petkov, ‘Who is That? Brain Networks and Mechanisms for Identifying Individuals’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19 (2015), 783-96.

This is another post catching up on interesting pieces in Trends in Cognitive Sciences. Here there is something like a theme connecting three diverse articles. They all tackle a recurring issue in cognitive science: the difficulty of working out how to connect individual operations of the brain with the larger functions that result from the combination of individual operations. In these essays there are some new ideas and some words of caution. None points all that directly, as far as I can see, at any literary intersections, but the dilemma of how precisely to link up demonstrable details with overall effects is one that literary criticism could also face, and wouldn’t find all that easy to solve.

Porter et al. discuss the problems of false memory in criminal testimony. They show how people can be drawn into confessions. The questioning methods that enable these false memories may be employed wittingly or unwittingly: it’s easy to see how an interviewer with a sense of purpose, a known narrative into which they are fitting a possible perpetrator, may achieve the same as a deliberate manipulator. As they say in the conclusion, ‘the highly reconstructive nature of memory can have devastating effects in the criminal justice system’. The ‘reconstructive’ quality that’s crucial here is the result of multiple processes working together; their interaction may be the source of some of the unreliability.

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Naotsugu et al. discuss research into consciousness. They are worried about the importance of self-report in much of this work, and whether it might have distorted the methods used to explore ‘neural correlates’ of consciousness. If you ask people to tell you when they are, for example, aware of certain things, and rely on that to determine your theories about conscious processes, then you may not get at the right neural activities which are making those processes happen. Here again it’s vital to understand, they argue, ‘how nerve cells [involved in consciousness] interact’, the ‘true neural basis’; this may require a ‘no-report’ method.

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Perrodin et al. are interested in how we recognise one another. The dilemma here too is how to understand different sensory inputs in relation to the integrated recognition outcome. The technical dilemma is whether identifications ‘rely on modality-independent convergence or involve ongoing synergistic interactions along the multiple sensory streams’. One route to better understanding, it is argued, involves primate research, where it is easier to get a closer look at ‘converging sensory streams in the primate anterior temporal lobe’. To be honest, I don’t find the mechanistic aims of either of this or the previous essay all that congenial, but I suppose that eventually it may be possible and even just about desirable to parse so many of the separate neural sparks and links that the human mystery is fully fathomed.