| Abstrakt: |
This article analyzes the science of superstition and their use in literary works by authors Gertrude Stein and William James. In the book "The Autobiography of Ailce B. Tokias," by Gertrude Stein, the thematic treatment of superstition in her experimental writings seeks to account for, and to a certain extent reproduce, the cognitive processes by which the mind engages the world. Though Stein claimed to be working against the grain of nineteenth-century literary tradition, in her effort to capture the motions of the mind as it detects and interprets natural and cultural signs, she both incorporates and transforms con- ventional narrative. James found appealing in spiritualism its rejection of the rationalist hypothesis that natural laws could account for all phenomena. |
