Karin Kukkonen

Bio: Karin Kukkonen is an academic researcher from University of Oslo. The author has contributed to research in topics: Narrative & Narratology. The author has an hindex of 12, co-authored 58 publications receiving 565 citations. Previous affiliations of Karin Kukkonen include University of Oxford & University of Mainz.

Introduction: What Is the "Second Generation?"

Abstract: 1. Preliminary MovesWhat does it mean to take a "second-generation" approach to the cognitive study of literature? Since this label can easily lend itself to misunderstandings, we want to make clear that "second-generation" refers to a specific strand in contemporary cognitive science, one foregrounding the embodiment of mental processes and their extension into the world through material artifacts and socio-cultural practices."First-generation" theories in the cognitive sciences conceive of the mind as based on abstract, propositional representations. Like a computer, the first-generation mind would process information as largely independent from specific brains, bodies, and sensory modalities. By contrast, "second-generation" approaches-a term coined by Lakoff and Johnson (Philosophy 77-78)-reject previous models of the mind as unduly limited to information processing, placing mental processes instead on a continuum with bioevolutionary phenomena and cultural practices. We treat "second-generation cognitive science" as interchangeable with another, more technical-sounding label used by cognitive scientists-that of "e-approaches" to cognition (Menary; Hutto). Here the e's stand for theories bringing to the fore the enactive, embedded, embodied, and extended qualities of the mind. To this list we may add "experiential" and "emotional," since this new paradigm gives experience and emotional responses a much more important role in cognition than first-wave, computational cognitivism. Bringing these e-approaches together under a common tag is at some level problematic, as Menary points out (459-461 ), because the theories and methodologies that it encompasses often prove distinct on closer examination. We will have to keep in mind this caveat as we explore the potential of these cognitive models for literary interpretation and theorization. The diversity of the secondgeneration framework is, in itself, a reminder that-again in Menary's words-"our cognitive lives are rich and varied and that simple homogenous explanations do not do justice to the complexity of cognitive phenomena" (461). At the same time, second-generation approaches also show some remarkable continuities: they converge on a view of the human mind as shaped by our evolutionary history, bodily make-up, and sensorimotor possibilities, and as arising out of close dialogue with other minds, in intersubjective interactions and cultural practices.These are the shared tenets of a second-generation account of cognition, and the complexity of the resulting framework is, as we will show, perfectly suited to match the complexity of literary (and, more generally, artistic) practices. Hence, this special issue attempts to map out the continuities among e-approaches and bring them to bear on longstanding narrative, literary, and aesthetic questions. In this process of interdisciplinary bridge-building, the essays touch on all the e's of e-approaches, exploring how perception and mental imagery are enacted through sensorimotor patterns (Kuzmicova; Muller), how creativity is extended through material artifacts (Bernini), how the reading process is shaped by embodied schemata and lived experiences (Caracciolo; Kukkonen; Troscianko), and how characters' fictional minds are in themselves embodied and embedded in socio-cultural contexts (Bernaerts). Though our main focus will be on literature, by including Muller's essay on the embodiment of film viewing we would like to underscore the connections between literary scholarship and the neighboring field of film studies, where cognitive approaches have gained explicit recognition, often by drawing on what we are calling "second-generation" cognitivism here.Contrasting first-generation and second-generation cognitive science does, of course, raise the question of whether a similar split exists, or can be identified, within cognitive approaches to literary narrative. Lakoff and Johnson themselves point out that their distinction "has nothing to do with the age of any individual or when one happened to enter the field The distinction is one of philosophical and methodological assumptions" (Philosophy 78). …

Metalepsis in Popular Culture

Abstract: Metalepsis refers to the crossing of boundaries between fiction and reality in narratives. This volume provides a systematic overview of metalepsis, its types and effects, in popular culture. The contributions discuss popular fiction, fan fiction, pop lyrics, comics, films, animated cartoons, music videos, live performances and TV series from the turn of the 20th century to the present day. "Metalepsis in Popular Culture" introduces the rhetorical concept of metalepsis and applies it to contemporary popular culture, thereby demonstrating its importance for the negotiation of fact and fiction in our cultural world.

Presence and Prediction: The Embodied Reader's Cascades of Cognition

Abstract: Even if a literary theory is not expressly geared to reader response or the empirical investigation of what real readers do, every attempt to theorise interpretation models its ideal readers as it describes how meaning emerges from texts. Does the reader master a secondary system of literary expression on top of language, as the structuralists propose (see Culler)? Is the reader 'greedy,' her mindreading capacities gobbling up whatever mental states the narrative text offers, as proponents of theory of mind might suggest (see Zunshine)? Does he go along for a ride in the emotional rollercoaster of the narrative that speaks to his sentiments (see Warhol)? As second-generation approaches to narrative develop new models for the process of interpretation, partly on the back of empirical research into embodied responses to reading, the question of what a model for the 'embodied reader' might look like arises. At this point, no fully-fledged conceptualization of the embodied, enactive, embedded, and emotional reader has been attempted, but accounts of interpretation in a second-generation vein give us a glimpse: In Guillemette Bolens The Style of Gestures, readers responds to the gestures, movements and other kinesthetic features of the literary text. According to Marco Caracciolo, he lives vicariously through the embodied experiences evoked by the literary text. In this special issue, we have also seen this reader take different stances towards the embodied features of the text (Kuzmicova) and caught her adventuring on the traces which authors lay down for readers to follow (Bernini). In this article, I develop a model for the embodied reader, which draws on the insights of second-generation cognitive sciences into the embodied, extended, and embodied features of cognition. The model makes no empirical claims; rather, it combines empirical research and philosophical accounts of the experiential dynamics of presence with a consideration of the temporal and conceptual dynamics of literary text. (2) Whenever I speak of the embodied reader, this is shorthand for a model of the act of reading which takes into account readers' embodied responses. Earlier critical reader models, such as Wolfgang Iser's "implied reader, have foregrounded the temporal and conceptual dynamics of anticipation and propositional meaning-making, but were not specifically interested in the embodied engagements of reading. Whenever I speak of the implied reader, this is shorthand for a model of the act of reading that sidelines the embodied aspects of reading and focuses on abstract, propositional meaning making. In what follows, I aim to devise a critical model of the embodied reader in dialogue with earlier reader constructs, in particular, Iser's "implied reader." Let us start by tracing what the second-generation cognitive sciences allow us to conclude about the reading process of the embodied reader in the following passage from the 1753 novel The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom by Tobias Smollett. What are the textual features that might give the embodied reader a sense of being there in the fictional world? The protagonist Ferdinand has just had a brush with death and escapes with a potentially treacherous landlady as his guide to the next town and safety: Common fear was a comfortable sensation to what he felt in this excursion. The first steps he had taken for his preservation, were the effects of meer instinct, while his faculties were extinguished or suppressed by despair: but, now as his reflection began to recur, he was haunted by the most intolerable apprehensions. Every whisper of the wind through the thickets, was swelled into the hoarse menaces of murder, the shaking of the boughs was construed into the brandishing of poignards, and every shadow of a tree, became the apparition of a ruffian eager for blood. In short, at each of these occurences, he felt what was infinitely more tormenting than the stab of a real dagger; and at every fresh filip of his fear, he acted as remembrancer to his conductress, in a new volley of imprecations importing that her fife was absolutely connected with his opinion of his own safety. …

Studying Comics and Graphic Novels

Abstract: “Karin Kukkonen’s Studying Comics and Graphic Novels provides the reader with the tools necessary to transform themselves quickly from a comics reader to a comics scholar, capable of engaging graphic narratives from a broad range of approaches and ready to engage in this dynamic and emerging fi eld of study. This is a smart introduction that takes both its readers and its comics very seriously indeed, while always remaining lively and accessible.” Jared Gardner, Ohio State University Today’s comics and graphic novels tackle serious themes and win Pulitzer prizes. This guide introduces their distinctive characteristics, traces their historical development, and analyzes their narrative structure. An ideal course book, the text includes material on sub-genres, such as autobiography and literary adaptation, and deploys the principles of cognitive science to explore how we respond to texts that fuse visual and linguistic storytelling techniques.

Bayesian Narrative: Probability, Plot and the Shape of the Fictional World

Abstract: ‘Probability’ seems to be a term forgotten by literary theory. Central to neoclassical and Augustan criticism, probability describes the inferences of readers and their developing discernment of what is likely to happen in a narrative (Patey 1984). This article proposes to bring probability back into the current debates in narratology and literary theory by drawing on recent advances in probabilistic, Bayesian approaches to different aspects of human cognition. Considering the example of Frances Burney’s novel Evelina (1778), it presents a Bayesian model for the analysis of narrative through the ways in which the encounter with the text shapes readers’ probability judgements. A narrative’s ‘probability design’ cues readers to revise ormaintain their expectations for its further development and leads readers to accept outcomes as inevitable that seemed distinctly unlikely at the beginning of the narrative (such as Evelina’s brilliant marriage to the aristocrat Lord Orville in Burney’s novel). Reconsidering narrative from a Bayesian, probabilistic point of view offers new perspectives on the emotional investments of readers in narrative, aswell as plot and verisimilitude. Karin Kukkonen, University of Turku E-Mail: karin.kukkonen@utu.fi

Remembering. A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, Cambridge (University Press) 1964.

Abstract: Part I. Experimental Studies: 2. Experiment in psychology 3. Experiments on perceiving III Experiments on imaging 4-8. Experiments on remembering: (a) The method of description (b) The method of repeated reproduction (c) The method of picture writing (d) The method of serial reproduction (e) The method of serial reproduction picture material 9. Perceiving, recognizing, remembering 10. A theory of remembering 11. Images and their functions 12. Meaning Part II. Remembering as a Study in Social Psychology: 13. Social psychology 14. Social psychology and the matter of recall 15. Social psychology and the manner of recall 16. Conventionalism 17. The notion of a collective unconscious 18. The basis of social recall 19. A summary and some conclusions.