Publications
Publication details [#3008]
Brône, Geert and Jeroen Vandaele. 2009. Cognitive Poetics: The Cognitive Construal of Literary Texts (Applications of Cognitive Linguistics 10). Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter . vii, 560 pp.
Publication type
Book – monograph
Publication language
English
Keywords
Abstract
Positioned at the intersection of cognitive linguistics and literary poetics, the volume offers a state-of-the-art collection of mostly new contributions and two updated versions of field-defining papers in the newly emerging research paradigm that is alternatively labelled Cognitive Poetics (Tsur 1992; Stockwell 2002; Freeman, in press) or Cognitive Stylistics (Weber 1996, Semino & Culpeper 2002). Following Jonathan Culler's important distinction in literary theory, "Poetics starts with attested meanings or effects and asks how they are achieved", and is opposed to literary Hermeneutics, which seeks "to discover new and better interpretations" for literary texts (Culler 1997: 61). Following up on Culler, Cognitive Poetics formulates and tests specific cognitive-linguistic hypotheses on the processing that underlies literary interpretation and, thus, also "focuses on process, not product" (M. Freeman 2002: 43). Specifically, the cognitive-linguistic hypothesis that language reflects general cognitive structure, (1) allows linguistic analysis to tackle subtle cognitive construal mechanisms underlying stylistic choices and poetic meaning effects and (2) allows poetics to link linguistic resources of literature to hypotheses on general cognitive architecture. In this line of thought, the book integrates insights from various disciplines-cognitive linguistics, poetics, foregrounding theory, cognitive psychology, etc.-in order to yield powerful tools for the analysis of prose and poetry comprehension. In this domain, the following (and other) research questions are addressed: How can Construction Grammar, Frame Semantics & Langackerian subjectivity be related to literary humour? In what way is literary character cognitive? Can poeticity be envisaged as iconicity (feeling-form-meaning blending)? Do specific poetic environments prototypically trigger ironic interpretations? How complex is the cognitive-narrative connection? How can visual-textual cartoon blends support narrative mimesis? Does mental space theory go beyond possible world theory as a phenomenology of literary text worlds? How does nonmetaphorical language create macro-metaphorical effects-in literature and elsewhere? How and when is the poetic effect of "distance" achieved?
(Geert Brône & Jeroen Vandaele)
Introductory Essay
Geert Brône & Jeroen Vandaele
Chapters
Eleni Antonopoulou
Deconstructing humour with construction grammar
Line Brandt
Mental Spaces and the analysis of literary discourse [exact title pending]
Jonathan Culpeper
Margaret Freeman
Rachel Giora, Ofer Fein, Dana Eisenberg & Shani Erez
What kind of context favors irony?
David Herman
Cognitive narrative analysis
Zouhair Maalej
Tim Rohrer
Elena Semino
Text worlds in literature
Gerard J. Steen
Nonmetaphorical metaphor
Reuven Tsur
Revised re-publication of the paper "Lakoff's roads not taken"
Lieven Vandelanotte & Barbara Dancygier
Willie Van Peer