Barbara Simerka uses cognitive cultural studies to delineate new ways of looking at early modern Spanish literature and to analyse cognition and social identity in Spain from the late fifteenth to late eighteenth centuries. She analyses works by Cervantes and Gracian, as well as picaresque novels and comedias. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, she brings together several strands of cognitive theory and details the synergies among neurological, anthropological, and psychological discoveries that provide new insights into human cognition.