The brain of Robert Frost

In his newest book, Norman Holland brings brain science to literary criticism. The Brain of Robert Frost combines psychoanalysis with the revolutionary new findings of brain research and cognitive psychology to model the way we create and respond to literature. Holland draws three central ideas from "the mind's new science": the critical "supercharged" period in infancy when individuality is formed; the binding of emotion to intellect deep in the old brain; the top-down, inside-out, feedback processing of language in the new. Then, using Robert Frost as an example both of a writer and a reader, and comparing Frost's reading of a poem to readings by six professors of literature, Holland builds a new, powerful way of thinking about literary criticism and teaching. - Back cover.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.