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The editors of the Journal of Literary Theory have invited me to reflect on the role ›the empirical‹ plays in the disciplinary conceptualisation and the practices of literary studies. In the pages of this journal, the term ›empirical‹, in the understanding of the proponents of the approach variously styled as ›neo-naturalist‹, ›cognitive‹ or ›neuroaesthetic‹, has been used in a very specific sense, namely, relating to the experimentally tested findings of evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology and neurobiology. The empirical data referred to are thus the neurological processes happening in the brains of readers (there seems to be less interest in the brains of authors) and serve as a new basis for understanding the psychological processes involved in the act of reading. Gerhard Lauer begins his thought-provoking article »Going Empirical. Why We Need Cognitive Literary Studies« with two related observations that together point to what he considers a paradoxical blind spot in literary studies. While »literature is a psychological phenomenon«, simultaneously »modern empirical perspectives on the psychology of literature have been almost completely edged out of the field« (Lauer 2009, 145). As Lauer claims, to establish – or rather, re-invent – literary studies on the grounds of cognitive empirical approaches based on neurological data would significantly transform the understanding of the discipline and its relation to other disciplines. The rhetoric in this and other contributions to the controversy (e. g. Eibl 2007) suggests that the two approaches are incompatible. On the one hand, there are the ›hard-nosed‹ cognitive literary studies, closely allied with the empirical human sciences, and self-styled as the (only) ›scientific‹ approach in the humanities. On the other hand, there are lit-

»I cannot endure to read a line of poetry«. The Text and the Empirical in Literary Studies