Although emotions are a frequent and common attribute shared by all of humanity little consensus exists among theorists who set out to understand and explain what this phenomena is all about. René Descartes set the tone about 360 years ago with his dichotomous interpretation that separated body from mind and therefore left little room for the influence that emotions actually could have upon the mind. Many contemporary authors speak of emotions in terms of desires and beliefs but do so by dismissing physiology altogether. A new and promising approach seen as a continuation of the physiological understanding as initiated by William James seeks out to understand emotions and related phenomena by carefully using neurobiological evidence in order to develop a new theory for understanding them. This approach used by Antonio Damasio is the main focus of this thesis. Damasio combines neurobiological evidence from patients who have suffered damage to specific parts of the brain along with philosophical insight. l will explain how he uses this method in order to describe emotions in terms of the influence they have upon reason and decision making as well as their role in the creation and development of consciousness and the self. / Bien que les émotions constituent un attribut partagé par l'ensemble des humains, on s'étonnera de constater qu'il existe peu de consensus chez les théoriciens qui tentent de comprendre ce phénomène. René Descartes fut probablement celui qui aura le plus influencé notre compréhension des émotions, il y a environ 360 ans, en élaborant son interprétation dichotomique qui séparait le corps et l’esprit. Toutefois, on peut reprocher à cette approche d ' avoir accordé peu d ' attention à l’influence réelle des émotions sur l’esprit. De même, plusieurs auteurs contemporains abordent les émotions en termes de désirs et croyances mais négligent souvent l’aspect physiologique du sujet. Une approche neurobiologique nouvelle et prometteuse constituant une suite logique de la compréhension physiologique des émotions telle qu'initiée par William James tente de comprendre les émotions et les phénomènes apparentés en utilisant méticuleusement des preuves neurobiologiques dans le but de développer une nouvelle théorie. C'est sur cette approche, due à Antonio Damasio, que se concentre ce mémoire. Damasio fait la combinaison de données scientifiques issues de cas de patients ayant subi des dommages à des régions spécifiques du cerveau et d'intuitions philosophiques. Je montrerai comment il tente ainsi d'expliquer l'influence des émotions sur la raison et sur la prise de décision, ainsi que leur rôle dans la création et le développement de la conscience et du soi.

ix, 203 p. : ill. / As critic Jonathan Gottschall notes, "The literary scholar's subject is ultimately the human mind - the mind that is the creator, subject, and auditor of literary works." The primary aim of this dissertation is to use modern cognitive science to better understand the early modern mind. I apply a framework rooted in cognitive science--the interdisciplinary study of how the human brain generates first-person consciousness and relates to external objects through that conscious framework--to reveal the role of consciousness and memory in subject formation and creative interpretation, as represented in period drama. Cognitive science enables us as scholars and critics to read literature of the period through a lens that reveals subjects in the process of being formed prior to the "self-fashioning" processes of enculturation and social discipline that have been so thoroughly diagnosed in criticism in recent decades. I begin with an overview of the field of cognitive literary theory, demonstrating that cognitive science has already begun to offer scholars of the period a vital framework for understanding literature as the result of unique minds grappling with uniquely historical problems, both biologically and socially. From there, I proceed to detailed explications of neuroscience-based theories of the relationship between the embodied brain, memory, and subject identity, via detailed close reading case studies. In the primary chapters, I focus on what I consider to be three primary elements of embodied subjectivity in drama of the period: basic identity reification through unique first-person memory (the Tudor interlude Jake Juggler ), more complex subject-object relationships leading to alterations in behavioral modes (Hamlet ), and finally, the blending of literary structures and social context in the interpretation of subject behavior (Middleton's A Trick to Catch the Old One ). / Committee in charge: Lisa Freinkel, Chairperson; George Rowe, Member; Ben Saunders, Member; Lara Bovilsky, Member; Ted Toadvine, Outside Member