Wonderworks

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. Literature 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. Shakespeare's Eureka 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. Based on author Angus Fletcher's own research, Shakespeare's Eureka is an eye-opening and thought-provoking work.