4E Cognition and Eighteenth-Century Fiction: How the Novel Found its Feet by Karin Kukkonen (review)

4E cognition (embodied, embedded, extended and enactive cognition) is the defining feature of second-generation cognitive science, which replaces a computer-like cognitive processing model with one that highlights the interactive dynamism between the mind, the body and the environment. Research on literary reading in light of 4E cognition has piqued scholarly interest in the theoretical and empirical study of embodied reading. Karin Kukkonen’s 4E Cognition and Eighteenth Century Fiction is the first monograph in this field that proposes a historical approach to cognitive literary studies and examines how the novel finds its “feet” as well as its “body” in the process of becoming a mature literary genre in the eighteenth century.