This āfascinatingā (Malcolm Gladwell, New York Times bestselling author of Outliers) examination of literary inventions through the ages, from ancient Mesopotamia to Elena Ferrante, shows how writers have created technical breakthroughsārivaling scientific inventionsāand engineering enhancements to the human heart and mind.
Literature is a technology like any other. And the writers we revereāfrom Homer, Shakespeare, Austen, and othersāeach made a unique technical breakthrough that can be viewed as both a narrative and neuroscientific advancement. Literatureās great invention was to address problems we could not solve: not how to start a fire or build a boat, but how to live and love; how to maintain courage in the face of death; how to account for the fact that we exist at all.
Wonderworks reviews the blueprints for twenty-five of the most significant developments in the history of literature. These inventions can be scientifically shown to alleviate grief, trauma, loneliness, anxiety, numbness, depression, pessimism, and ennui, while sparking creativity, courage, love, empathy, hope, joy, and positive change. They can be found throughout literatureāfrom ancient Chinese lyrics to Shakespeareās plays, poetry to nursery rhymes and fairy tales, and crime novels to slave narratives.
A ārefreshing and remarkableā (Jay Parini, author of Borges and Me: An Encounter) exploration of the new literary field of story science, Wonderworks teaches you everything you wish you learned in your English class, and ācontains many instances of critical insight....Whatās most interesting about this compendium is its understanding of imaginative representation as a technologyā (The New York Times).