Beyond the Frame: Cognitive Science, Common Sense and Fiction

TLDR: The authors argue that certain types of modernist and post-modernist self-reflexive fiction paradoxically provoke focused schema-consis tent reading and foreground stereotype frames to alleviate the cognitive load that schema-inconsistent information presents to the reader.

Abstract: According to popular definition, the subject matter of fiction is invention, whereas nonfiction relies on factual ("real-world") data. Recent developments in cognitive narratology (Ryan, Fludernik, Jahn, Herman) considerably reduce the value of sharp distinction between fiction and nonfiction, however. The concepts of "frame", "schema" and "script" provide a link between the "real-life" and "fictional" experience. As Pierre Ouellet observes, the "real-life" knowledge contains a signifi cant number of propositions that are taken for granted and are employed by the com munity or individuals either intuitively (as rules of thumb) or rationally as "shortcuts" of experience; these often do not withstand critical scrutiny and may qualify as "natural fictions" based solely on the immediacy and fullness of belief. From this perspective, fiction is continuous with accepted opinions, stereotypes and other components of folk knowledge (i.e. beliefs used as "default knowledge") that people rely on in everyday life. My hypothesis is that certain types of modernist and postmodernist self-reflexive fiction paradoxically provoke focused schema-consis tent reading and foreground stereotype frames to alleviate the cognitive load that schema-inconsistent information presents to the reader. In this case naturalizing reading and focusing on the commonsense frames as secure and reliable as com pared with the strange or indeterminate data beyond the frame is provocatively sup ported by the text itself; however, if sustained, it leads to impoverished interpretation of the events and diminishes the cognitive effect of inconsistent data.