Early novel reading typically conjures images of rapt readers in quiet rooms, but commentators at the time described reading as a fraught activity, one occurring amidst a distracting cacophony that included sloshing chamber pots and wailing street vendors. Auditory distractions were compounded by literary ones as falling paper costs led to an explosion of print material, forcing prose fiction to compete with a dizzying array of essays, poems, sermons, and histories. In Distraction, Natalie M. Phillips argues that prominent Enlightenment authorsfrom Jane Austen and William Godwin to Eliza Haywood and Samuel Johnsonwere deeply engaged with debates about the wandering mind, even if they were not equally concerned about the problem of distractibility.
Phillips explains that some novelists in the 1700sviewing distraction as a dangerous wandering from singular attention that could lead to sin or even madnessattempted to reform diverted readers. Johnson and Haywood, for example, worried that contemporary readers would only focus long enough to "look into the first pages" of essays and novels; Austen offered wry commentary on the issue through the creation of the daft Lydia Bennet, a character with an attention span so short she could listen only "half-a-minute." Other authors radically redefined distraction as an excellent quality of mind, aligning the multiplicity of divided focus with the spontaneous creation of new thought. Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, for example, won audiences with its comically distracted narrator and uniquely digressive form.
Using cognitive science as a framework to explore the intertwined history of mental states, philosophy, science, and literary forms, Phillips explains how arguments about the diverted mind made their way into the century's most celebrated literature. She also draws a direct link between the disparate theories of focus articulated in eighteenth-century literature and modern experiments in neuroscience, revealing that contemporary questions surrounding short attention spans are grounded in long conversations over the nature and limits of focus.
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 Attention The 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 Overload Rhythms of Narrative, Rhythms of Mind The Scattered Rhythms of Cognitive Overload Susannah and the Vexed Situation of Madam Reader The Anatomy of Parallel Processing The Sermon: Asynchronous Rhythms of Prose 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 Attention The Politics and Poetics of Fixation Involuntary Attention: A Multifocal Selective Blindness Sympathy and the Benefits 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 Vacancy The Dangers of Too Much Attention Distraction as Liveliness of Mind Mary Bennet: Hyperfocus and Cognitive Immobility Lady Catherine de Bourgh: The Problem of Excess Vigilance Elizabeth Bennet: The Benefits 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
""Among its many strengths, Distraction's greatest contribution is its elegant articulation of Phillips's interdisciplinary methodology, which interlinks literary historicism and cognitive science to foster ""productive dissonance between fi elds"" (222).""