Wonderworks: Literary invention and the science of stories

A brilliant examination of literary inventions through the ages, from ancient Mesopotamia to Elena Ferrante, that shows how writers have created technical breakthroughs - rivalling any scientific inventions - and engineering enhancements to the human heart and mind.\nLiterature is a technology like any other. And the writers we revere - from Homer through to Shakespeare and Austen - each made a unique technical breakthrough that can be viewed as both a narrative and neuroscientific advancement. Literature's great invention was to address problems we could not solve: not how to start a fire or build a boat, but how to live and love; how to maintain courage in the face of death; how to account for the fact that we exist at all.\nWonderworks reviews the blueprints for twenty-five of the most powerful developments in the history of literature. These inventions can be scientifically shown to alleviate grief, trauma, loneliness, anxiety, numbness, depression, pessimism and ennui - all while sparking creativity, courage, love, empathy, hope and joy. They can be found all throughout literature - from ancient Chinese lyrics to Shakespeare's plays, poetry to nursery rhymes and fairy tales, and crime novels to slave narratives.\nBased on author Angus Fletcher's own research, Wonderworks is an eye-opening and thought-provoking work.