Rereading Brian Stock's essay “Minds, Bodies, Readers," I wondered what class members would say about it: why are we reading this? What does healing and meditation have to do with reading? What does the history of medicine and pre-modern mind-body theories and practices have to do with reading?
And while I cannot answer these questions directly, I found myself, again, very intrigued by Stock's comments on the early, pre-modern western practices of meditative reading and visualization, which apparently were abandoned as time passed (I am still not quite certain why).
Stock's historical survey of body-mind concerns in relation to the history of reading makes me aware that reading is an activity that does involve the mind and the body; yet we forget about the body, even though, or precisely when, reading is pervasively understood as a cognitive skill.
We have all experienced, however, how profoundly our bodies respond to, and are engaged with, what we read--and not only in moments of narrative suspense. When we describe reading as a refuge or an escape, we also describe a way of feeling about ourselves--relaxed, perhaps, at ease, comfortably or pleasurably engaged.
What might meditative reading be like? Perhaps a bit like what Newkirk describes as "slow reading?" Reading in which we linger over a text, in ways that allows us to forget ourselves or connect with ourselves as deeply as we might in meditating, when we enter a realm that is no longer merely the personal self--when we become self-forgetful?
I don't know--but I am intrigued and agree with Stock that we should find out much more about reading as a body-mind practice.
During your discussion of Stock's essay last night, I became curious about how the body responds or doesn't respond to our reading of a text, particularly one we might not understand versus one that we are drawn to for some reason--or one that we are told will evoke a response from us. I also wonder about how the body responds if we are able to visualize and hear the text, make it come "alive."
ReplyDeleteYes, I had similar questions. Are there studies around about that? Wouldn't it be interesting to know if anyone has studied the effect of different kinds of reading on the body?
ReplyDeleteI think there are some studies on brain activity and reading--particular on metaphor and the brain.
It would be interesting to watch people read--to see what they do with their bodies while reading different kinds of texts.