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Cognitive Poetics: A New Introduction
Cognitive poetics is a new way of thinking about literature, involving the application of cognitive linguistics and psychology to literary texts. This book is the first introductory text to this growing field.
In Cognitive An Introduction , the reader is encouraged to re-evaluate the categories used to understand literary reading and analysis. Covering a wide range of literary genres and historical periods, the book encompasses both American and European approaches. Each chapter explores a different cognitive-poetic framework and relates it to a literary text. Including a range of activities, discussion points, suggestions for further reading and a glossarial index, the book is both interactive and highly accessible.
Cognitive An Introduction is essential reading for students on stylistics and literary-linguistic courses, and will be of interest to all those involved in literary studies, critical theory and linguistics.
In Cognitive An Introduction , the reader is encouraged to re-evaluate the categories used to understand literary reading and analysis. Covering a wide range of literary genres and historical periods, the book encompasses both American and European approaches. Each chapter explores a different cognitive-poetic framework and relates it to a literary text. Including a range of activities, discussion points, suggestions for further reading and a glossarial index, the book is both interactive and highly accessible.
Cognitive An Introduction is essential reading for students on stylistics and literary-linguistic courses, and will be of interest to all those involved in literary studies, critical theory and linguistics.
193 pages, Paperback
First published June 27, 2002
12 people are currently reading
109 people want to read
About the author
Peter Stockwell
41 books5 followersBA English Language and Literature (Liverpool 1988)
PhD (Liverpool 1991)
FEA (Fellow of the English Association) (from 2012)
He works in literary linguistics; cognitive poetics; stylistics; applied linguistics; science fiction; surrealism. he maintains an interest in sociolinguistics and in language education both in the UK and across the world.
At the University of Nottingham he is the Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement (Europe).
PhD (Liverpool 1991)
FEA (Fellow of the English Association) (from 2012)
He works in literary linguistics; cognitive poetics; stylistics; applied linguistics; science fiction; surrealism. he maintains an interest in sociolinguistics and in language education both in the UK and across the world.
At the University of Nottingham he is the Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement (Europe).
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April 18, 2020
خوانشی ناتمام به خاطر دشواری و تازگی و همچنین غریب بودن تمامی نمونه های بررسی شده.
شاید در آینده ای نزدیک از سر اجبار، دوباره بخوانم
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April 1, 2024
Dense in its own specific terminology and concepts, this is a book that requires some intensive note-taking and subsequent revision, or I find it all just goes in one ear and out the other. From my point of view as a literary translator, I see this book as a collection of various theories and conceptual schemes, which vie with each other as much as they complement one another, and which are not particularly helpful, except perhaps in providing some tools for getting to grips with readers' text comprehension from various angles.
A couple of samples of my notes from this book:
Foregrounding within the text can be achieved by a variety of devices, such as repetition, unusual naming, innovative descriptions, creative syntactic ordering, puns, rhyme, alliteration, metrical emphasis, the use of creative metaphor, and so on. All of these can be seen as deviations from the expected or ordinary use of language that draw attention to an element, foregrounding it against the relief of the rest of the features of the text. Deviance has also been seen to be one of the important elements in literariness, or at least in literary value.
Image schemas are mental pictures that we use as basic templates for understanding situations that occur commonly. We build up image schemas in our minds, and we tend to share particular image schemas with the community in which we live, on the basis of our local bodily interaction with the world.
Locative expressions, such as in the following literary titles, are expressed with prepositions that can be understood as image schemas: ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ (W.B. Yeats), The Man in the High Castle (Philip K. Dick), One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Ken Kesey), Out of Africa (Isaak Dinesen/Karen Blixen), ‘Under Milk Wood’ (Dylan Thomas), Behind the Scenes at the Museum (Kate Atkinson), The Voyage Out (Virginia Woolf), Love in a Cold Climate (Nancy Mitford). The image schemas underlying these prepositions all involve a dynamic movement, or at least a final resting position resulting from a movement (‘in the High Castle’, ‘Behind the Scenes’). For example, the title of Kesey’s novel has a moving figure (‘One’) which can be pictured as moving from a position to the left of the ground (‘the Cuckoo’s Nest’), to a position above it, to end up at a position to the right of it. In this OVER image schema, the moving figure can be seen to follow a path above the ground. Within the image schema, though, the element that is the figure is called the trajector and the element it has a grounded relationship with is called the landmark.
The creative elaboration of image schemas can be seen as the striking or unsettling re-cognition of familiar patterns: that is, defamiliarisation.
It seems that our cognitive system for categorisation is not like an ‘in or out’ filing cabinet, but an arrangement of elements in a radial structure or network with central good examples, secondary poorer examples, and peripheral examples. The boundaries of the category are fuzzy rather than fixed. You can test this by considering which is more ‘fruity’: potatoes or cabbages?
One fully worked out approach to cognitive deixis is deictic shift theory (DST),
Borrowing a term from computer science, this type of deictic shift is a push. In my scale of entity-roles near the beginning of this chapter, pushing into a deictic centre in the text is a movement towards the right of the diagram. Moving from being a real reader to perceiving yourself in a textual role as implied reader or narratee, or tracking the perception of a narrator or character, all involve a deictic shift that is a push into a ‘lower’ deictic field. Entering flashbacks, dreams, plays within plays, stories told by characters, reproduced letters or diary entries inside a novel, or considering unrealised possibilities inside the minds of characters are all examples of pushing into a deictic field.
By contrast, moving up a level is a pop, leftwards in my diagram. You can pop out of a deictic field by putting a book down and shifting your deictic centre back to your real life level as real reader. Within a text, you can pop up a level if the narrator appears again at the end to wrap up the narrative, or if the narrator interjects opinion or external comment at any point within the narrative.
scripts, plans, goals and their contents are not fixed structures but are assembled in the course of discourse processing. Their configuration is dynamic and depends both on the stylistic input and the particular experiential base of the reader.
Any ordinary schema can appear in a literary context, but once there it is treated in a different way as a result of literary reading. It is this reading angle that ‘re-registers’ the original schema and processes it in terms of literary factors.
A literary schema for fiction, for example, is based on alternativity when compared with the organising principles of our other world schemas (more on worlds in Chapters 7 and 10). Measuring the divergence from our everyday expectations of text schemas and language schemas in literature is a matter of narratological and stylistic analysis. The degree of deviation from our sense of reality in world schematic structure can be measured on a scale of informativity, on the basis of three orders of informativity:
• first-order informativity – normal, unremarkable things are schema preserving or reinforcing.
• second-order informativity – unusual or less likely things encountered in
literary worlds develop schematic knowledge by accretion.
• third-order informativity – impossible or highly unlikely things represent
a challenge to schema knowledge as schema disruption. This can result in
schema refreshment or radical knowledge restructuring if the challenge
necessitates a wholesale paradigm shift, a change in worldview.
The theory of mental spaces was developed by Fauconnier (1994). The principle of conceptual blends within mental spaces is from Fauconnier (1997: 149–86). See also Fauconnier and Turner (1996), Turner and Fauconnier (1999), and the collection edited by Goldberg (1996). For applications, see the collection edited by Fauconnier and Sweetser
Gemini
Fauconnier's theory of mental spaces dives into how we construct meaning through creating temporary mental structures. These structures, called mental spaces, are essentially compartments in our minds that hold concepts and relationships relevant to a specific thought or situation.
Here's a breakdown of the key ideas:
Mental Spaces: Imagine these as temporary containers holding bits of information related to a particular idea. They're not full representations of reality, but rather focused cognitive models.
Building Mental Spaces: We build mental spaces as we think, talk, or process information. Language plays a big role in triggering the creation of these spaces.
Not static: Mental spaces aren't isolated. They can connect to each other and information can be shared between them. This allows for complex ideas to be formed.
Mental space theory is closely linked to another concept:
Conceptual Blending: This refers to the process of creating new mental spaces by merging elements from two or more existing spaces. This is how we understand metaphors and make creative leaps in thinking.
Fauconnier's theory offers a new perspective on how meaning is constructed, emphasizing the dynamic and flexible nature of human thought. It helps explain how we can go beyond the literal meaning of words and create new understanding through mental space creation and blending.
In the Middle Ages, a logic of homology (identity beyond analogy) between nature and language was widespread. Since creation was consistent, natural resemblances were thought to be reflected in linguistic resemblances, and so literary co-incidences of sound and sense had a thematic significance beyond mere craft, making an impact in the world of the reader (this had its
culmination in the conceits and puns of the metaphysical poets,
Gemini
Conceptual blending, also known as conceptual integration, is a theory in cognitive linguistics that explains how we create new meaning by combining elements from different mental spaces.
Mental spaces, according to the theory, are temporary structures in our minds that hold concepts related to a specific situation. Think of them like little containers holding ideas relevant to a particular task.
Conceptual blending happens when we bring information from two or more of these mental spaces together and create a new understanding. This new understanding is called the blend.
Here's a breakdown of the key parts:
Mental Spaces: These are temporary thought structures that hold concepts related to a specific situation. Imagine a mental space for "baking a cake" containing ingredients, tools, and instructions.
Conceptual Blending: This is the process of combining elements from different mental spaces. You might blend the "baking a cake" space with a "competition" space to understand a baking competition.
The Blend: This is the new understanding that emerges from blending the mental spaces. In the baking competition example, the blend might capture the idea of ケーキ (kekè, cake) as a product to be judged, not just enjoyed.
Conceptual blending is a fundamental part of how we think and use language. It helps us understand metaphors, make analogies, and come up with creative ideas.
--
In the philosophical tradition known as phenomenology, a distinction has been made between objects which exist in the world in their own right (autonomous objects) and objects which only come into being when engaged by an observing consciousness (heteronomous objects). The former have a material and objective existence that can be verified and discussed: examples of autonomous items include objects such as a parliament building, a house for the government executive, ballot boxes, voting slips. Out of these there is a heteronomous object called ‘democracy’, which is a holistic and inter-subjectively agreed object that is partly composed of the first few items. Books are autonomous objects, but literature is a heteronomous object.
Deictic sub-worlds include flashbacks, as well as flashforwards, and any
other departure from the current situation, such as the world within
direct speech, or any view onto another scene (a character watching a
play, talking on the telephone, watching television, and so on). Shifts
into deictic sub-worlds involve a variation in one or more world-building elements, most usually shifts in time and location. The world
expressed within direct speech is a sub-world, since it is distinct from the
surrounding discourse, and will often involve shifts from third to first
and second person, a proximal-remote reversal, and other features
deictically recentred on the speaker within the narrative.
Gemini
Text world theory dives into how we understand language by building mental worlds. Here's a quick rundown:
Mental Worlds: We construct mental representations of what we read or hear, like building a world in our minds. This "world" reflects the characters, places, situations, and ideas presented in the text.
Building Blocks: As we consume the text, we add details to this mental world. Information about characters, locations, objects, and events act as the building blocks.
Connections and Coherence: The theory emphasizes how we make connections between these elements to create a coherent mental world. We infer unspoken information and fill in gaps to ensure a logical and understandable world in our minds.
Context is Key: Understanding the context is crucial. Text world theory considers how our background knowledge and the type of text (e.g., news report vs. poem) influence how we build this mental world.
Beyond Text: The theory isn't limited to written text. It applies to spoken language as well, including conversations and storytelling.
In essence, text world theory helps explain how we actively process language by constructing and enriching these mental worlds as we engage with different forms of communication.
--
Text world theory, schema theory, possible worlds and discourse worlds theory, mental space theory, and the notion of parable all have points of significant overlap but also different
strengths and weaknesses in particular applications.
Construction-integration (CI) model of comprehension
Essentially, the model is a development of the notion of macrorules and macrostructures outlined in Chapter 9. Comprehension is seen as a two-stage process. The first stage is a construction phase in which a macrostructural representation is created. This is an approximation (the ‘gist’) of the propositional content of the text. It is constructed from the textbase together with inferences made at the local level of the reading process, and is at this stage incoherent.
The representation achieves coherence by the second phase of comprehension: the integration phase. Cognitive constraints of coherence, relevance and significance have to be satisfied by rejecting local incoherences in favour of a globally coherent representation. The resolution is produced out of a tension between the detail of the textbase (the readerly word-by-word encounter) and the situation model (the reader’s understanding of context). The overall comprehension is thus a representation not simply of the propositional content of the literary work, but also its social and personal impact, its felt experience. The aim of the CI model of comprehension is to reintegrate cognition with emotional and motivational aspects of experience and behaviour.
The approach sets out the different levels of mental representation in terms of distance from the stimulating environment:
• direct representation – the most basic perceptual and innate system,
including the sensory and motor skills of viewing the world, and repetitive physical tasks which can be learned. All animals share this level.
• episodic representation – event memory which is available for recall.
This level is still heavily dependent on the environment, but is closer to
script-like knowledge. Higher animals, such as apes, share this level.
• image and action representation – non-verbal representations, such as
body-language and facial expressions. A social community is required
for this level.
• narrative representation – verbal representations that are linear and
propositional, including semantic processing, inferencing and induction
• abstract representation – also linguistic or semiotic, where abstract
thought, hypothesis-formation, analysis, deduction and logical thought
happen.
Contextual frame theory was developed in order to understand how readers track reference to characters and events through the process of reading. The basic notion involves the idea of a contextual frame, a mental representation of the circumstances containing the current context. This is built up from the text itself as well as from inferences drawn directly from the text
Information in the frame can be episodic or non-episodic. For example, some facts about a character in a literary work will apply to them at one point in the narrative but not at others. In Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the mariner tells his story to the narrating wedding guest: inside his story, he tells of a journey in which he shot an albatross, and was then visited by a sequence of bad luck. The reader has to keep track of the fact that the mariner at the beginning of his story does not possess the same knowledge as the mariner at the end of the story. The attachment of this knowledge is episodic. However, the mariner remains a mariner throughout, and this knowledge is thus non-episodic in the narrative.
Readers monitor this contextual frame by a variety of means. First, characters and objects are bound into the frame in which they appear, and they are bound out when they leave. They remain bound to that frame at that particular time, but are unbound from different contextual frames unless the text explicitly binds them in. Both movements of binding have to be explicitly cued by the text. A sense of incoherence is produced when elements simply appear or disappear, or turn up unannounced in another frame without being directly referenced or their entrance or exit predicated with a verb. Exceptions include ghost stories or science fiction settings...
...the notion of language as essentially embodied and experiential is hardly new to feminism, having been discussed at least as far back as Virginia Woolf and expressed in literary texts such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland (1914), for example. Cognitive poetics offers a principled means of understanding the expression of such experiences and intuitions.
A talismanic word especially for the Romantics, imagination is of course at the core of cognitive poetics, and our great challenge is to be able to explore its workings and understand its mysterious processes more richly. It has been used to invoke the creative act of literary production, but of course imagination is required of the reader just as much as empathy or projection. Here perhaps is where we need the most radical deliberate shifts in metaphor. Recent work which has moved in this direction includes that by Scarry (2001), as she explores our human capacity for invoking mental images, making them move, and moving around within them
---
There are dozens of basic concepts like these that need to be considered at leisure and perhaps mind-mapped and systematized. Not a light read at all, but the author presents the arguments quite digestibly without too much weird academic jargon. Will have to go over all this again soon though, as it has not yet really gelled in my mind.
A couple of samples of my notes from this book:
Foregrounding within the text can be achieved by a variety of devices, such as repetition, unusual naming, innovative descriptions, creative syntactic ordering, puns, rhyme, alliteration, metrical emphasis, the use of creative metaphor, and so on. All of these can be seen as deviations from the expected or ordinary use of language that draw attention to an element, foregrounding it against the relief of the rest of the features of the text. Deviance has also been seen to be one of the important elements in literariness, or at least in literary value.
Image schemas are mental pictures that we use as basic templates for understanding situations that occur commonly. We build up image schemas in our minds, and we tend to share particular image schemas with the community in which we live, on the basis of our local bodily interaction with the world.
Locative expressions, such as in the following literary titles, are expressed with prepositions that can be understood as image schemas: ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ (W.B. Yeats), The Man in the High Castle (Philip K. Dick), One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Ken Kesey), Out of Africa (Isaak Dinesen/Karen Blixen), ‘Under Milk Wood’ (Dylan Thomas), Behind the Scenes at the Museum (Kate Atkinson), The Voyage Out (Virginia Woolf), Love in a Cold Climate (Nancy Mitford). The image schemas underlying these prepositions all involve a dynamic movement, or at least a final resting position resulting from a movement (‘in the High Castle’, ‘Behind the Scenes’). For example, the title of Kesey’s novel has a moving figure (‘One’) which can be pictured as moving from a position to the left of the ground (‘the Cuckoo’s Nest’), to a position above it, to end up at a position to the right of it. In this OVER image schema, the moving figure can be seen to follow a path above the ground. Within the image schema, though, the element that is the figure is called the trajector and the element it has a grounded relationship with is called the landmark.
The creative elaboration of image schemas can be seen as the striking or unsettling re-cognition of familiar patterns: that is, defamiliarisation.
It seems that our cognitive system for categorisation is not like an ‘in or out’ filing cabinet, but an arrangement of elements in a radial structure or network with central good examples, secondary poorer examples, and peripheral examples. The boundaries of the category are fuzzy rather than fixed. You can test this by considering which is more ‘fruity’: potatoes or cabbages?
One fully worked out approach to cognitive deixis is deictic shift theory (DST),
Borrowing a term from computer science, this type of deictic shift is a push. In my scale of entity-roles near the beginning of this chapter, pushing into a deictic centre in the text is a movement towards the right of the diagram. Moving from being a real reader to perceiving yourself in a textual role as implied reader or narratee, or tracking the perception of a narrator or character, all involve a deictic shift that is a push into a ‘lower’ deictic field. Entering flashbacks, dreams, plays within plays, stories told by characters, reproduced letters or diary entries inside a novel, or considering unrealised possibilities inside the minds of characters are all examples of pushing into a deictic field.
By contrast, moving up a level is a pop, leftwards in my diagram. You can pop out of a deictic field by putting a book down and shifting your deictic centre back to your real life level as real reader. Within a text, you can pop up a level if the narrator appears again at the end to wrap up the narrative, or if the narrator interjects opinion or external comment at any point within the narrative.
scripts, plans, goals and their contents are not fixed structures but are assembled in the course of discourse processing. Their configuration is dynamic and depends both on the stylistic input and the particular experiential base of the reader.
Any ordinary schema can appear in a literary context, but once there it is treated in a different way as a result of literary reading. It is this reading angle that ‘re-registers’ the original schema and processes it in terms of literary factors.
A literary schema for fiction, for example, is based on alternativity when compared with the organising principles of our other world schemas (more on worlds in Chapters 7 and 10). Measuring the divergence from our everyday expectations of text schemas and language schemas in literature is a matter of narratological and stylistic analysis. The degree of deviation from our sense of reality in world schematic structure can be measured on a scale of informativity, on the basis of three orders of informativity:
• first-order informativity – normal, unremarkable things are schema preserving or reinforcing.
• second-order informativity – unusual or less likely things encountered in
literary worlds develop schematic knowledge by accretion.
• third-order informativity – impossible or highly unlikely things represent
a challenge to schema knowledge as schema disruption. This can result in
schema refreshment or radical knowledge restructuring if the challenge
necessitates a wholesale paradigm shift, a change in worldview.
The theory of mental spaces was developed by Fauconnier (1994). The principle of conceptual blends within mental spaces is from Fauconnier (1997: 149–86). See also Fauconnier and Turner (1996), Turner and Fauconnier (1999), and the collection edited by Goldberg (1996). For applications, see the collection edited by Fauconnier and Sweetser
Gemini
Fauconnier's theory of mental spaces dives into how we construct meaning through creating temporary mental structures. These structures, called mental spaces, are essentially compartments in our minds that hold concepts and relationships relevant to a specific thought or situation.
Here's a breakdown of the key ideas:
Mental Spaces: Imagine these as temporary containers holding bits of information related to a particular idea. They're not full representations of reality, but rather focused cognitive models.
Building Mental Spaces: We build mental spaces as we think, talk, or process information. Language plays a big role in triggering the creation of these spaces.
Not static: Mental spaces aren't isolated. They can connect to each other and information can be shared between them. This allows for complex ideas to be formed.
Mental space theory is closely linked to another concept:
Conceptual Blending: This refers to the process of creating new mental spaces by merging elements from two or more existing spaces. This is how we understand metaphors and make creative leaps in thinking.
Fauconnier's theory offers a new perspective on how meaning is constructed, emphasizing the dynamic and flexible nature of human thought. It helps explain how we can go beyond the literal meaning of words and create new understanding through mental space creation and blending.
In the Middle Ages, a logic of homology (identity beyond analogy) between nature and language was widespread. Since creation was consistent, natural resemblances were thought to be reflected in linguistic resemblances, and so literary co-incidences of sound and sense had a thematic significance beyond mere craft, making an impact in the world of the reader (this had its
culmination in the conceits and puns of the metaphysical poets,
Gemini
Conceptual blending, also known as conceptual integration, is a theory in cognitive linguistics that explains how we create new meaning by combining elements from different mental spaces.
Mental spaces, according to the theory, are temporary structures in our minds that hold concepts related to a specific situation. Think of them like little containers holding ideas relevant to a particular task.
Conceptual blending happens when we bring information from two or more of these mental spaces together and create a new understanding. This new understanding is called the blend.
Here's a breakdown of the key parts:
Mental Spaces: These are temporary thought structures that hold concepts related to a specific situation. Imagine a mental space for "baking a cake" containing ingredients, tools, and instructions.
Conceptual Blending: This is the process of combining elements from different mental spaces. You might blend the "baking a cake" space with a "competition" space to understand a baking competition.
The Blend: This is the new understanding that emerges from blending the mental spaces. In the baking competition example, the blend might capture the idea of ケーキ (kekè, cake) as a product to be judged, not just enjoyed.
Conceptual blending is a fundamental part of how we think and use language. It helps us understand metaphors, make analogies, and come up with creative ideas.
--
In the philosophical tradition known as phenomenology, a distinction has been made between objects which exist in the world in their own right (autonomous objects) and objects which only come into being when engaged by an observing consciousness (heteronomous objects). The former have a material and objective existence that can be verified and discussed: examples of autonomous items include objects such as a parliament building, a house for the government executive, ballot boxes, voting slips. Out of these there is a heteronomous object called ‘democracy’, which is a holistic and inter-subjectively agreed object that is partly composed of the first few items. Books are autonomous objects, but literature is a heteronomous object.
Deictic sub-worlds include flashbacks, as well as flashforwards, and any
other departure from the current situation, such as the world within
direct speech, or any view onto another scene (a character watching a
play, talking on the telephone, watching television, and so on). Shifts
into deictic sub-worlds involve a variation in one or more world-building elements, most usually shifts in time and location. The world
expressed within direct speech is a sub-world, since it is distinct from the
surrounding discourse, and will often involve shifts from third to first
and second person, a proximal-remote reversal, and other features
deictically recentred on the speaker within the narrative.
Gemini
Text world theory dives into how we understand language by building mental worlds. Here's a quick rundown:
Mental Worlds: We construct mental representations of what we read or hear, like building a world in our minds. This "world" reflects the characters, places, situations, and ideas presented in the text.
Building Blocks: As we consume the text, we add details to this mental world. Information about characters, locations, objects, and events act as the building blocks.
Connections and Coherence: The theory emphasizes how we make connections between these elements to create a coherent mental world. We infer unspoken information and fill in gaps to ensure a logical and understandable world in our minds.
Context is Key: Understanding the context is crucial. Text world theory considers how our background knowledge and the type of text (e.g., news report vs. poem) influence how we build this mental world.
Beyond Text: The theory isn't limited to written text. It applies to spoken language as well, including conversations and storytelling.
In essence, text world theory helps explain how we actively process language by constructing and enriching these mental worlds as we engage with different forms of communication.
--
Text world theory, schema theory, possible worlds and discourse worlds theory, mental space theory, and the notion of parable all have points of significant overlap but also different
strengths and weaknesses in particular applications.
Construction-integration (CI) model of comprehension
Essentially, the model is a development of the notion of macrorules and macrostructures outlined in Chapter 9. Comprehension is seen as a two-stage process. The first stage is a construction phase in which a macrostructural representation is created. This is an approximation (the ‘gist’) of the propositional content of the text. It is constructed from the textbase together with inferences made at the local level of the reading process, and is at this stage incoherent.
The representation achieves coherence by the second phase of comprehension: the integration phase. Cognitive constraints of coherence, relevance and significance have to be satisfied by rejecting local incoherences in favour of a globally coherent representation. The resolution is produced out of a tension between the detail of the textbase (the readerly word-by-word encounter) and the situation model (the reader’s understanding of context). The overall comprehension is thus a representation not simply of the propositional content of the literary work, but also its social and personal impact, its felt experience. The aim of the CI model of comprehension is to reintegrate cognition with emotional and motivational aspects of experience and behaviour.
The approach sets out the different levels of mental representation in terms of distance from the stimulating environment:
• direct representation – the most basic perceptual and innate system,
including the sensory and motor skills of viewing the world, and repetitive physical tasks which can be learned. All animals share this level.
• episodic representation – event memory which is available for recall.
This level is still heavily dependent on the environment, but is closer to
script-like knowledge. Higher animals, such as apes, share this level.
• image and action representation – non-verbal representations, such as
body-language and facial expressions. A social community is required
for this level.
• narrative representation – verbal representations that are linear and
propositional, including semantic processing, inferencing and induction
• abstract representation – also linguistic or semiotic, where abstract
thought, hypothesis-formation, analysis, deduction and logical thought
happen.
Contextual frame theory was developed in order to understand how readers track reference to characters and events through the process of reading. The basic notion involves the idea of a contextual frame, a mental representation of the circumstances containing the current context. This is built up from the text itself as well as from inferences drawn directly from the text
Information in the frame can be episodic or non-episodic. For example, some facts about a character in a literary work will apply to them at one point in the narrative but not at others. In Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the mariner tells his story to the narrating wedding guest: inside his story, he tells of a journey in which he shot an albatross, and was then visited by a sequence of bad luck. The reader has to keep track of the fact that the mariner at the beginning of his story does not possess the same knowledge as the mariner at the end of the story. The attachment of this knowledge is episodic. However, the mariner remains a mariner throughout, and this knowledge is thus non-episodic in the narrative.
Readers monitor this contextual frame by a variety of means. First, characters and objects are bound into the frame in which they appear, and they are bound out when they leave. They remain bound to that frame at that particular time, but are unbound from different contextual frames unless the text explicitly binds them in. Both movements of binding have to be explicitly cued by the text. A sense of incoherence is produced when elements simply appear or disappear, or turn up unannounced in another frame without being directly referenced or their entrance or exit predicated with a verb. Exceptions include ghost stories or science fiction settings...
...the notion of language as essentially embodied and experiential is hardly new to feminism, having been discussed at least as far back as Virginia Woolf and expressed in literary texts such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland (1914), for example. Cognitive poetics offers a principled means of understanding the expression of such experiences and intuitions.
A talismanic word especially for the Romantics, imagination is of course at the core of cognitive poetics, and our great challenge is to be able to explore its workings and understand its mysterious processes more richly. It has been used to invoke the creative act of literary production, but of course imagination is required of the reader just as much as empathy or projection. Here perhaps is where we need the most radical deliberate shifts in metaphor. Recent work which has moved in this direction includes that by Scarry (2001), as she explores our human capacity for invoking mental images, making them move, and moving around within them
---
There are dozens of basic concepts like these that need to be considered at leisure and perhaps mind-mapped and systematized. Not a light read at all, but the author presents the arguments quite digestibly without too much weird academic jargon. Will have to go over all this again soon though, as it has not yet really gelled in my mind.
December 10, 2010
This book expands my literary vision in terms of reader-oriented perspective, not specifically broad impressionistic of 'reader response' criticism. The book though foregrounds an idealized reader as a distinction of an implied reader and offers how to achieve 'new reading' by cognitive process. How can we reach our interpretive controversies is an intriguing topic nowadays and this book might disclose how reader's 'natural' response is all about.
May 5, 2018
Pretty much all you could ask for in an introductory textbook to a relatively new field. Cogent and engaging.
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