Showing papers in "Poetics Today in 2018"

Fictional MindsComing to Terms with the Unnatural

Abstract: In the analysis and interpretation of fictional minds, unnatural and cognitive narratology may seem mutually exclusive. They each highlight different aspects of what narrators and characters think and feel, and their explanatory grounds differ. An unnatural reading unearths the narrative features, such as literal mind reading, that cannot be reduced to real-world possibilities, whereas a cognitive approach may focus on what is analogous to real-world cognition, or it may explain how unusual fiction is made sense of in cognitive terms. This article offers a synthesis in which the contrast between the two is closely examined. Then the article makes a case for a dialectical approach in which readings move from one position to another in order to achieve a more rewarding and encompassing understanding of fictional minds in general and unnatural minds in particular. The argument is developed through a reading of Peter Verhelst’s The Man I Became and through a discussion of the case of mind reading.

Introduction: Unnatural and Cognitive Perspectives on Narrative (A Theory Crossover)

Abstract: This special issue presents a “crossover” between two strands of contemporary narrative theory: a second-generation cognitive approach that foregrounds the linkage of stories, mind, and the human body; and an unnatural approach, which focuses on narratives that depart from and challenge everyday cognitive parameters, including those involved in so-called literary realism. In this introduction to the special issue, we take our cue from Franz Kafka’s “Wish to Become a Red Indian” (a paragraph-long short story) to illustrate these ways of theorizing about narrative and to Poetics Today 39:3 (September 2018) DOI 10.1215/03335372-7032676 q 2018 by Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics The first drafts of the essays in this special issue were presented inNovember 2016 at aworkshop hosted by the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University (Sweden). The editors would like to thank Christer Johansson and Göran Rossholm for making this workshop possible, and the participants for their input on the articles. Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/poetics-today/article-pdf/542780/0390429.pdf by guest on 25 November 2018 discuss the conceptual divides that separate them. From an unnatural perspective, the cognitive approach flattens narrative to real-world psychology; from a cognitive perspective, the unnatural approach ignores the way that every narrative, no matter how challenging or innovative, exploits our cognitive makeup. By examining these assumptions and by tracing the history of cognitive and unnatural models of narrative, this special issue seeks to move beyond a conceptual standoff between them. The essays collected in the issue demonstrate that it is possible to combine a cognitive approach with an interest in unnatural stories— or, conversely, an unnatural approach and attention to the cognitive and embodied dynamics of narrative. In addition to previewing the arguments advanced in the articles, this introduction explicates the innovative method of scholarly collaboration through which the articles came about, and the different results it produced in each case.

Immersion and defamiliarization: Experiencing literature and world

Abstract: REF Compliant by Deposit in other institution's Repository: Edinburgh's repository by 31/05/2017: https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/immersion-and-defamiliarization(1a866d00-e55c-4744-9b72-38b5a43c60b6).html

Interpretation: Its Status as Object or Method of Study in Cognitive and Unnatural Narratology

Abstract: Narratology and literary studies have always had ambivalent attitudes toward interpretation. This article proposes that the recent divide between the research programs of cognitive and unnatural narratology is a new expression of a profound methodological schism. Reviewing the status of interpretation in cognitive and unnatural approaches to narrative, we contend that scholars in the cognitive camp have tended to treat interpretation as an object of study (i.e., investigating the interpretive process), while those in the unnatural field typically treat it as a method of study (i.e., practicing interpretation in the study of narratives). Relatedly, whereas cognitive narratology assumes continuity between the interpretive processes operative in narrative understanding and the rest of life, the unnatural approach emphasizes discontinuity between fiction (reading) and the everyday. To show how these different conceptual underpinnings feed into contrasting academic practices, we supplement this theoretical overview with a double case study of Hans Christian Andersen’s short story “ The Shadow” (“Skyggen”). Taking advantage of our diverse disciplinary backgrounds, we offer one “interpretation” from a cognitive perspective and one from an unnatural narratological perspective, followed by metaresponses to each other’s responses. By setting up a theoretical and methodological dialogue, we highlight the nature of the differences between the two approaches while also looking for possible sites of overlap and cooperation.

The Artifactuality of Narrative FormFirst-Person Novels in France, 1601–1830

Abstract: Author(s): Paige, N | Abstract: When literary scholars analyze narrative personhood historically, they typically see periods, explained as an effect of deeper psychosocial mutations. Thus the dominant first person of the eighteenth century is the counterpart to a new bourgeois subject, while the third-person omniscience of the nineteenth might reflect an age of increasing state control. The article argues that only our impressionistic use of mostly canonical examples permits such sweeping statements and that the very notion of the period (never mind episteme or paradigm) is undermined by a quantitative examination of the literary archive and its evolution. Based on a systematic sample of French novels over twenty-three decades, this study concludes that narrative forms such as the memoir novel and the epistolary novel behave as successful artifacts. As they spread, they achieve a recognizable form that peaks at a certain point, after which use steadily declines. Because the novel as a whole is composed of multiple forms in constant flux, it becomes impossible to isolate periods of homogeneous practice that could be said to operate according to some deeper sociocultural logic.

Testing the LimitsLeanne Shapton’s Ekphrastic Assemblage

Abstract: It is common to claim that the recent surge in scholarship on ekphrasis has been stimulated by the pervasive presence of the image in what is broadly-if vaguely-referred to as "new media." However, ...