This volume is a collection of twelve contributions to the newly emerging research paradigm of what is alternately labelled as Cognitive Poetics (Tsur 1992; Freeman, in press) or Cognitive Stylistics (Weber 1996). This inherently multidisciplinary approach aims to provide a meta-framework, in that is focuses on the cognitive processing underlying literary interpretation, instead of simply offering a new interpretation based on a different framework: ''It focuses on process, not product (M. Freeman, this volume p. 43). Basically, cognitive stylistics integrates insights from various disciplines in order to yield a powerful tool to analyse (narrative) texts. Comparable to Psychostylistics, which combines modern developments in stylistics with narrative psychology and psychiatry (e.g. Bockting 1995), cognitive stylistics primarily draws from cognitive linguistics, cognitive psychology and the stylistic tradition of Foregrounding Theory (Mukarovsky 1970). Of particular importance for the development of cognitive stylistics is the widely held view in cognitive linguistics that language is not an autonomous cognitive faculty and that it reflects cognitive structure. (Geert Brône)