This study examined university students’ interpretations of a passage from the novel “The Anthologist” that notably described a poet’s career as his clinging onto an infinitely tall ladder leading up into the blinding blue. Understanding this excerpt requires readers to engage in “metaphor processing” where one applies a metaphoric reading to some instance of language or a situation to obtain allegorical meaning, as opposed to “processing metaphor” in which individual words and phrases are given metaphoric meaning. Students’ interpretations of both the individual segments and the entire text revealed significant allegorical abilities, many of which we centered on their elaboration of the common metaphorical theme LIFE IS A JOURNEY. But participants also clearly created textured, personal readings of fictional texts that gave each interpretive act it own unique, creative flavor. Although this study focused on the “products” of people’s interpretation for allegory, we speculate on the cognitive “processes” required for readers to produce their rich, detailed understandings of allegory in fiction.
José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Francisco & María Sandra Peña Cervel
2023. Structural similarity in figurative language: A preliminary cognitive analysis. Lingua 290 ► pp. 103541 ff.
Mastropierro, Lorenzo & Kathy Conklin
2023. What triggers perceptions of racism in Heart of Darkness? A reader-response analysis. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 32:4 ► pp. 437 ff.
Gibbs, Raymond W. & Carina Rasse
2022. Embodiment in the diversity of literary experience: a reply to Wolfgang Teubert (2021). Journal of Literary Semantics 51:1 ► pp. 55 ff.
Rasse, Carina & Raymond W. Gibbs
2021. Metaphorical thinking in our literary experiences of J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye”. Journal of Literary Semantics 50:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
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