Cognitive Narratology

In a (2010) discussion of recent narratological history, Monika Fludernik explains the concept of cognitive narratology. It is a really interesting discussion – and the many works she points to as relevant look particularly interesting (hence the list of references below). Fludernik explains:

“Turner and Fauconnier see metaphors as only one subtype of the cognitive strategy they call blending. Blending consists in fusing two scenarios together and thus creating new meaning effects.” (p.926)

“Blending, as Turner and Fauconnier argue, is responsible for the specifically human development of imagination and creativity. In particular, their blending theory aims at combining metaphor and narrative under one cognitive umbrella. Metaphor and narrative have been regarded as constitutive nonscientific modes of human cognition. Turner and Fauconnier depict them as two sides of the same coin, like Saussure’s signifier and signified: through blending, narrative approaches a situation in which one scenario merges with another, while in metaphor (generally acknowledged as a case of blending) the superimposition of two scenarios evokes narrative sequences.” (p.926)

“Cognitive narratology demonstrates that readers do not see texts as having narrative features but read texts as narrative by imposing cognitive narrative frames on them—for instance, by interpreting animals as quasi- human protagonists in fables.” (p.926)

“One can, moreover, diagnose an emotive turn in the humanities, which has given rise to numerous studies on the emotions and on empathy in literature.”6

“Current introductions to cognitive literary studies document the existence of a variegated set of approaches, methods, concepts, and theories that are often either application-oriented (taking one element or insight from cognitive studies in order to read one text or genre from that perspective) or theoretical and resistant to general application.7 The field at the moment resembles a group of construction sites, as some scholars concentrate on metaphor and blending theory (e.g., Gavins and Steen), others on cognitive reflexivity (Zunshine), still others on deixis (Stockwell) or space perception (Tsur). The different cognitive approaches show no sign of coalescing.” (p.927)

In her footnotes (6 and 7 are referred to above), Fludernik points to a number of works in the field:

“4. For a good basic introduction to blending, see Fauconnier and Turner, “Mechanism.” More generally on Turner’s recent work, see Turner, “Cognitive Study,” Lit­erary Mind, “Mind,” Reading Minds, and “Way”; Fauconnier and Turner, “Rethinking” and Way.
5. Turner established a research center on cognitive studies at Case Western Reserve University in 2004.
6. Let me note here the Journal of Narrative Theory 34.3 (2004) and the Journal of Literary Theory 1.2 (2007), as well as a few of the numerous books on the emotions and empathy: Benedict; Roberts; Kövecses; Terada; Hogan, Mind; and Keen.
7. For introductions see, e.g., Coulson and Oakley, Conceptual Blending and Conceptual Blending Theory; Richardson and Steen; Semino and Culpeper; Stockwell; Gavins and Steen; Herman; Hogan, Cognitive Science; Zunshine, Why We Read and Strange Concepts; and Tsur. Discussion of these problems is provided in, among others, Gibbs; Adler and Gross; and Sternberg.” (p.928)

Note that in the blurb about her, it indicates that Fludernik is “completing a study of prison metaphors in English literature” (p.924) – sounds fascinating to me!

Ref: Fludernik, Monika. ‘Narratology in the Twenty-First Century: The Cognitive Approach to Narrative’. PMLA 125.4 (2010): 924–30.

Reference is to:

Adler, Hans, and Sabine Gross. “Adjusting the Frame: Comments on Cognitivism and Literature.” Poetics Today 23.3 (2002): 195–220.

Benedict, Barbara M. Framing Feeling: Sentiment and Style in En glish Prose Fiction, 1745–1800. New York: AMS, 1994.

Coulson, Seana, and Todd Oakley, eds. Conceptual Blend­ing. Spec. issue of Cognitive Linguistics 11.3–4 (2001): 175–358.

Coulson, Seana, and Todd Oakley, eds. Conceptual Blending Theory. Spec. issue of Journal of Pragmatics 37.10 (2005): 1507–742.

Fauconnier, Gilles, and Mark Turner. “A Mechanism of Creativity.” Poetics Today 20.3 (1999): 397–418.
———. “Rethinking Metaphor.” The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought. Ed. Ray Gibbs, Jr. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008. 53–66.
———. The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic, 2002.

Gavins, Joanna, and Gerard Steen, eds. Cognitive Poetics in Practice. London: Routledge, 2003.

Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr. “Evaluating Contemporary Models of Figurative Language Understanding.” Metaphor and Symbol 16.3–4 (2001): 317–33.

Herman, David, ed. Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences. Stanford: Center for the Study of Lang. and Information, 2003.

Hogan, Patrick Colm. Cognitive Science, Literature, and the Arts: A Guide for Humanists. New York: Routledge, 2003.
———. The Mind and Its Stories: Narrative Universals and Human Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003.Richardson, Alan, and Francis F.

Keen, Suzanne. Empathy and the Novel. New York: Oxford UP, 2007. Semino, Elena, and Jonathan Culpeper, eds. Cognitive

Kövecses, Zoltán. Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Cul­ture, and Body in Human Feeling. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.

Perry, Menakhem. “Literary Dynamics: How the Order of a Text Creates Its Meaning.” Poetics Today 1.1–2

Richardson, Alan, and Francis F. Steen, eds. Literature and the Cognitive Revolution. Spec. issue of Poetics Today 23.1 (2002): 1–182.

Roberts, Nancy. Schools of Sympathy: Gender and Identi­fication through the Novel. Montreal: McGill- Queen’s UP, 1998.

Semino, Elena, and Jonathan Culpeper, eds. Cognitive Stylistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2002.

Sternberg, Meir. “Universals of Narrative and Their Cognitivist Fortunes.” Poetics Today 24.2–3 (2003): 297–395, 517–638.

Stockwell, Peter. Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 2002.

Terada, Rei. Feeling in Theory: Emotion after the “Death of the Subject.” Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2001.

Tsur, Reuven. Toward a Theory of Cognitive Poetics. 1992. 2nd ed. Brighton: Sussex Acad., 2008. Ansätze in der Erzähltheorie. Ed. Ansgar Nünning

Turner, Mark. “The Cognitive Study of Art, Language, and Literature.” Poetics Today 23.1 (2002): 9–20.
———. The Literary Mind. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.
———. “The Mind Is an Autocatalytic Vortex.” The Literary Mind. Ed. Jürgen Schläger and Gesa Stedman. Tübingen: Narr, 2008. 13–43.

———. Reading Minds: The Study of English in the Age of Cognitive Science. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991.
———. “The Way We Imagine.” Imaginative Minds. Ed. Ilona Roth. London: Oxford UP; British Acad., 2007. 213–36.

Zunshine, Lisa. Strange Concepts and the Stories They Make Possible: Cognition, Culture, Narrative. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2008. Print.
———. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2006.

Story and narrative

“Story and narrative: what’s the difference? Story and narrative are not synonyms. Very simply, ‘story’ directs our attention to what is told. ‘Narrative’ directs our attention to how it is told – to technique, not subject matter.” (p.28)

Ref: John Sutherland (2010) 50 Literature ideas you really need to know. Bloomsbury: London

Favourite Quotes 4

“actions have reasons.  What people do in narratives is never by chance, nor is it strictly determined by cause and effect; it is motivated by beliefs, desires, theories, values, or other “intentional states.”  Narrative actions imply intentional states.” [1]

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[1] Narrative construal of reality – bruner P136

The cell and the torture room as metaphor for marginalised relations

This reading got me wondering about violence in literature… and metaphors for violence and how the space of the fictional setting might be used to represent violence on a deeper level…

[in fact, the essay focuses its point elsewhere, but] Trevor James writes: “Post-colonial literary theory addresses the margins, showing how in the act of writing the marginalised writer begins the task of asserting, reappropriating and reclaiming power and identity against the established power of a post-colonial system which continues to exert its influence even after political independence has been achieved. In the South African situation, the novels of J.M. Coetzee exemplify how a post-colonial literature can develop postmodernist texts which have ethical and political relevance. …

Waiting for the Barbarians presents various ways in which post-colonial and religious perspectives combine. Its focus upon torture and imprisonment is in itself a focus upon extreme points of marginalisation, and contributes to a consistent aspect of South African writing. Coetzee shows the South African writer’s fascination with torture.

In 1980 I published a novel [Waiting for the Barbarians] about the impact of the torture chamber on the life of a man of conscience. Torture has exerted a dark fascination on many other South African writers. Why should this be so? […] relations in the torture room provide a metaphor, bare and extreme, for relations between authoritarianism and its victims. (Coetzee 1992: 363)

Yet not only do the cell and the torture room offer a cogent metaphor for the most marginalised of brutal relations, they also offer an indication of what is most irreducibly a truth. There are the place of pain, and as such also the place of truth. As places of truth, the cell and the torture room are places where the sacred must [-p142] be located. To put this another way, it is on the most extreme margin that the sacred may be fixed. This notion develops from Coetzee’s insistence that pain is an irreducible truth, an irreducible truth bearing authority and power.

If I look back over my own fiction, I see a simple (simple-minded?) standard erected. That standard is the body. Whatever else, the body is not ‘that which is not,’ and the proof is that it is is the pain it feels […] in South Africa it is not possible to deny the authority of suffering and therefore of the body. It is not possible, not for logical reasons, not for ethical reasons […] but for political reasons, for reasons of power […] it is not that one grants the authority of the suffering body: the suffering body takes this authority: that is its power […] its power is undeniable (Coetzee 1992: 248).” (pp.141-142)

Ref: Trevor James (c1996) Locating the Sacred: J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians pp.141-149 in Ed. Jamie S. Scott ‘And the Birds Began to Sing” Religion and Literature in Post-colonial Cultures. Amsterdam: Rodopi

The reference in the text is to Coetzee, JM 1992 Doubling the Point, ed. David Atwell. Cambridge MA: Harvard UP

Narrative and Metaphor in Domestic and International Politics

I thought these questions from the Claremont Symposium on Applied Social Psychology looked really interesting…

Warring with Words:
Narrative and Metaphor in Domestic and International Politics

Saturday, March 24, 2012
8:45 AM to 4:30 PM; Reception to follow

In recent years, scholars from a range of disciplines have examined the speeches and writings of political leaders around the world to identify the ways in which each employs stories and metaphors to recruit supporters, justify past actions, frame policies for the future, and negotiate with others. In addition, scholars have come to acknowledge that in their own analysis, theory, and commentary they, too, are incorrigible users of narrative and metaphor. This symposium brings together specialists in social psychology, political science, cognitive science, linguistics, literary studies, gender studies, and philosophy to identify the many ways in which narrative and metaphor function in discourse around politics. We shall be asking some of the following questions:

• Is it true that much communal and international hostility is generated, at least in part, by the fact that opposing groups hold to conflicting religious and historical narratives?

• Does each culture depend on a distinct cluster of metaphors for viewing the world?

• To what extent are domestic and international policies shaped by the metaphors employed to frame the problems they are designed to resolve?

• How effectively are the candidates in the upcoming US elections wielding stories and metaphors as campaigning weapons?

• How may dysfunctional political narratives and metaphors be critiqued and effectively amended?

• To what extent do political theorists depend on metaphor and political historians on narrative to conceptualize their fields and articulate their findings?

The annual Claremont Symposium on Applied Social Psychology will bring an international cast of prominent researchers to address these and other important questions.

http://www.cgu.edu/pages/9491.asp