At a time when in Australia the humanities are becoming less important to the benefit of
STEM education, the cognitive approach to the study of literature is acquiring symbolic and
political significance. It could be seen as a promising area of reconciliation of the sciences
with the humanities, in which literature is redefined as a rich cognitive artefact and a kind of
ever-expanding archive which, among other things, embodies the extension of the cognitive
capacities of our brain. All of this probably helps to explain why Australian cognitive
and neurohumanist literary studies seem to be multiplying and gaining more and more
visibility in the global academic scene, with a growing number of theoretical works mixing
scientific approaches and literary critical practice. A survey of such emerging research field
was attempted in the volume The Rise of Australian Neurohumanities edited by Jean-François
Vernay (2021).
