Cognitive Poetics

In the last decade or so, Cognitive Poetics has received increasing scholarly interest as a self-standing subfield in cognitive scientific research (Brone 2009; Gavins and Steen 2003; Semino and Culpeper 2002; Stockwell 2002; Tsur 2008). In this field, research along the cross-linguistic dimension has started to gather momentum, but so far limited attention has been given to constructional approaches (e.g. Boas ed. 2010). In view of the existing gap, we propose to examine the form-meaning pairings in a poetic text and its translations. The poem we choose is Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, its Ukrainian translations by M. Lukash and V. Korniyenko and by V. Narizhna and its Czech translations by J. Cisař and A. and H. Skoumals, and we focus on only the first stanza. In the current paper, we in particular look at compounding and lexical blending (Kemmer 2003; Renner et.al ed. 2012 and the references therein), a morphological strategy of abridging and combining various lexical roots to fo...

As hundreds of so-called "psychotherapies" have been foisted onto the public, all claiming to treat "mental illness," newer understandings of how the human brain actually works and the processes which drive the formations of mentation that we refer to as "the mind," demand a reassessment of what exactly we are referring to by the term "mental illness" and what kinds of intervention would be feasible in both the prevention of and recovery from cognitive and behavioral disorder. A fundamental process in the formation of an individual's mentation is the associations of experience. These associations not only account for constructive behavior, but can also lead to deleterious or negative behavior, suggesting that some associations are negative and therefore the negative behavior can be remolded through contrasting positive associations; however, to understand what this really means and how it works, we must start at the beginning and define what exactly is this negative behavior that we refer to by the term "mental illness." One of the most important axioms of life so simply but profoundly phrased by Oscar Wilde, is that "the truth is rarely pure and NEVER simple" (emphasis mine). Nothing can ever be explained by simple sound bites – oversimplification is just another word for misrepresentation – so to understand, we must truly engage the subject, and to engage the subject, we must first and foremost clearly define what it is that we are seeking to understand. In this case, it demands that we understand what exactly is mental illness.

A la recherche du temps perdu, the last great pre-Freudian novel of the mind, has attracted much attention from psychoanalytic critics since its publication. This article explores the analysis of Proust’s novel by critics, with a particular focus on the representation of the conscious and unconscious mind. It follows the history of such criticism through the rise of psychoanalysis in the humanities to the waning of its influence in the early years of the present century. The article argues that our postpsychoanalytic present is the ideal moment to reexamine the parallels and divergences between Proust’s and Freud’s understandings of consciousness and to measure them against the rival philosophical and psychological theories developed during the twentieth century. The current pluralism in the humanities’ approach to analyzing representations of the mind allows the literary author’s implicit understanding of mental life to assert itself more clearly.

This Foreword, about robots, written in both poetry as well as prose, introduces the edited collection _Androids, Cyborgs, and Robots in Contemporary Culture and Society_, edited by Steven J. Thompson (IGI Global, 2018). The link on the thumbnail cover at
https://www.igi-global.com/book/_/179222 will take you directly to the published Foreword, which is open access. The attached PDF, sent directly to me from IGI-Global to use here, is presented with written permission of the publisher.

This article attempts to reinstate the inherent rigor of “image” as a literary
term by addressing the theoretical issues related to the image that W. J. T. Mitchell discusses
in his encyclopedia entry and his articles on the concept. The image is usually
considered an overly psychological concept that lacks the rigor of rhetorical devices such
as metaphor. This article clarifies the relationship between the image and metaphor by
arguing that, while an image may not be immediately considered a metaphor, a metaphor
may be thought of as a composite and relational proposition-image. It underscores
the futility of insisting on the concrete sensual (or visual) aspect of the image, arguing
that, before any sensual attribution, the image must primarily be thought of as a reference
or picture, which may at times be obscure, indefinite, or even empty. It also raises
some objections to the conceptualization of the mental picture as private by arguing that
the word on which the mental image is based cannot be less private or “mental.”
Keywords: image, W. J. T. Mitchell, metaphor, figure, rhetoric, privacy, sensuality

These poems, composed in Somali and in English, provide a poetic reflection of the recently emerged debate on the theme of Caddaan Studies which means "White Studies". The criticism and counter-criticism contained in the debate dug so deep into life nerve of Somali Studies that over a thousand people participated. The poems, under the title "Inaugurating Caddaan Studies" were composed with a critical observation of the debate.

“Blue Universe (flowers of symbiosis)” is a book containing
a love poem, divided into four parts in ascending progression:
from the beholding and idealisation of the Beloved Woman (I);
the approach (II); the discouragement (III); in the end, the full
expression of love happens, with an invitation to the Beloved,
unveiling the full thrill through the accomplishment of love
(IV).
This album was influenced by the “Song of Songs”.
Drawings by ANA PINTO, inspired in this light poetry,
illustrate the idyllic setting and the tension created by this
magic book.
This love poem is an english translation of the original portuguese poem "Universo azul (flores da simbiose)".

Literary critics are interested in meaning (interpretation) but when linguists, such as Haj Ross, look at literature, they’re interested in structure and mechanism (poetics). Shakespeare presents a particular problem because his plays exist in several versions, with Hamlet as an extreme case (3 somewhat different versions). The critic doesn’t know where to look for the “true” meaning. Where linguists to concern themselves with such things (which they mostly don’t), they’d be happy to deal with each of version separately. Undergraduate instruction in literature is properly concerned with meaning. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness has become a staple because of its focus on race and colonialism, which was critiqued by Chinua Achebe in 1975 and the ensuing controversy and illustrates the problematic nature of meaning. And yet, when examined at arm’s length, the text exhibits symmetrical patterning (ring composition) and fractal patterning. Such duality, if you will, calls for two complementary critical approaches. Ethical criticism addresses meaning (interpretation) and naturalist criticism addresses structure and mechanism (poetics).

This article presents a discourse-based approach to negation by applying text world theory to the analysis of negation in the novel Catch-22, by Joseph Heller (1986 [1961]), The model developed for the analysis of negation is based on Werth’s (1999) notion of negation as a subworld which modifies information which is present in the common ground of the discourse. By so doing, negation contributes to the general discourse function of updating information in the text world. Additionally, negation may form part of contradictory structures which, being self-contained units, do not contribute to the updating discourse function but, rather, seem to block the flow of information. The analysis of the functions of negation is framed within a broader framework of stylistic analysis, where the objective is to discuss how the foregrounded nature of negation as a recursive feature in Catch-22 may have a defamiliarizing effect. The argument put forward in this article is that negation plays a crucial role in the expression of a conflict between what is presented as real and what is presented as not real in the fictional world; this conflict, in its turn, has important consequences for the way the story develops and the way major themes of the novel are treated.

Gianni Celati ha suggerito che la narrazione dell’Orlando furioso procede attraverso il concatenamento di impulsi elementari, di ostinazioni e raptus, di moti psico-fisici immediati. Nella filigrana delle vicende narrate si può quindi leggere il conflitto permanente tra alcuni nuclei emotivi ed esperienziali fondamentali, che arriva a sabotare la continuità della coscienza. La complessità dell’intreccio diventa anche una rappresentazione della complessità della vita psichica. 
Con il presente intervento vorrei verificare l’idea che un personaggio in particolare del Furioso possa essere interpretato come la messa in figura di un’ipotesi di gestione e dominio di questa complessità. Si tratta di Astolfo, il paladino che, trasformato dalla maga Alcina in mirto, entra nel poema emergendo da un’esperienza di smarrimento dell’identità. Riconquistata la forma umana, Astolfo affronta e sconfigge diverse manifestazioni della dismisura, del mostruoso, dell’informe, della mutevolezza e dell’instabilità. Ed è chiamato a dissolvere il castello di Atlante, liberando i cavalieri dalle loro ossessioni ripetitive e dando la possibilità alle loro storie di dispiegarsi. Recuperando il senno di Orlando, poi, il paladino non solo contribuisce alla soluzione della vicenda bellica del poema, ma reintegra nell’universo poematico la possibilità di superare e vincere le intermittenze della coscienza. Astolfo, l’eroe incosciente, diventa funzione del prodursi della coscienza. Che non dipende, come dimostrano le sue avventure «fortunose», determinate dal caso e modellate dalle circostanze, da un atto supremo della volontà, ma da un’elaborazione contingente e flessibile dell’esperienza.
L’intervento seguirà un doppio percorso interpretativo, testuale e visivo. Attraverso l’analisi testuale vorrei mostrare come le vicende che riguardano Astolfo possano essere lette come prove di dominio empirico della realtà, psichica e relazionale. Facendo interagire i testi con alcune immagini, poi, tratte dalla tradizione illustrativa del poema e da altre interpretazioni figurative del Furioso, vorrei suggerire che l’eroe ariostesco, misurando quasi cartograficamente lo spazio narrativo e segnando i suoi confini, incarna uno sguardo sul mondo che corrisponde al tentativo, percepito in tutta la sua precarietà, di sollevarsi dalle emergenze nucleari e di conquistare una visione prospettica sul reale.

Chapter to appear in the HSK Handbook on Language and Emotion (ed. by Gesine Lenore Schiewer, Jeanette Altarriba and Bee Chin Ng). Based on research in cognitive linguistics, cognitive poetics and stylistics, the chapter examines the complex relationship of rhythmic patterns, prosody, and phonology with emotional qualities respectively emotive effects of literary texts.

Talking about his most unconventional plays, Attempts on Her Life (1997) and Fewer Emergencies (2005), British playwright Martin Crimp recently said that "in this second kind of writing, the dramatic space is a mental space, not a physical one." Picking up on this expression, I propose to look at the main characteristics of a ‘theatre of the mental space’ which, since Samuel Beckett, delves into individual psychological complexes, traumas, neuroses, and even psychiatric disorders from alternating and often marginalized points of view through the use of hypersubjective figures and indistinct voices instead of traditional, defined characters. In Crimp’s Attempts on Her Life, the suicide character of Anne who, in scenario 11, "quite clearly should’ve been admitted […] to a psychiatric unit […] where she could receive treatment," is used as a means to explore the secret fears and obsessions that filter through the voices of anonymous and undefined characters who comment upon her life and death. Sarah Kane's last two pieces, Crave (1998) and 4.48 Psychosis (2000) show a similar, converging evolution of her dramatic writing towards what could be termed a "psychopoetics of the stage," this time using a first-person perspective.

More broadly, the construction of dramatic spaces which are no longer physical but psychological and which investigate either specific "mentalities" (Crimp) or the mind as a dramatic world in itself seems to characterize a specific turn in contemporary theatre. Through new, unconventional forms of dialogue, monologue, and narration, these stylised explorations of our "dramas-in-the-head" form what could be labelled ‘In-Your-Head’ theatre, as opposed to the famous "In-Yer-Face" theatre (Aleks Sierz) which characterized the British stage of the 1990s. In addition to Crimp’s and Kane’s plays under the influence of Samuel Beckett’s theatre, I propose to see how other British playwrights such as Harold Pinter, Caryl Churchill, and debbie tucker green also evoke the tortuous and haunted mindscapes of vanishing subjects, leading to a "trauma-poetics."

Using works by literary critic Les Esslin on the "empty figure on the empty stage" in Beckett’s theatre, French philosopher and psychoanalyst Anne Dufourmantelle on women and sacrifice, Professor Elisabeth Angel-Perez on Trauma Drama in contemporary British theatre and Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner’s Mental Space Theory, I look at how such plays renew the forms of a "psychiatric realism" on the contemporary British stage (Christina Wald). By exploring the mind and psyche as they constitute a major terrain of investigation at the beginning of the twenty-first century, as shown by the development of neuroscience and cognitive science, these theatres of the mental space reflect on urgent philosophical, ethical and societal questions on subjectivity and the self around the idea that "part of modern identity is to live inside our heads" (Crimp).

This article explores the complex nature of the literature classroom by drawing on the cognitive linguistic framework Text World Theory to examine the teacher’s role as facilitator and mediator of reading. Specifically, the article looks at how one teacher used visual representations as a way of allowing students to engage in a more personal and less teacher-driven transaction with a poem, and to encourage them to reflect on their own roles as active makers of meaning and knowledge in the classroom. The article shows how teachers can be mindful of the various contextual factors that can privilege and legitimise certain kinds of response in the classroom and be wary of external factors and pressures that can promote the idea of preconceived knowledge. The teacher in the case study presented was able to both facilitate the experience of reading poetry in an unmediated way and also develop her students’ metacognition in relation to the reading process itself. The article shows how Text World Theory’s status as a socio-cognitive grammar may be of benefit to teachers in understanding the nature of communicative interaction and literary transaction.

In the article, from the standpoint of cognitive poetics, the features of updating the RAUM con-ceptosphere in the poetry of R. M. Rilke are considered. The relevance of the  study is due to insufficient knowledge of the phenomenon of the  individual author’s conceptosphere of the poetic text, as well as  the features of the functioning of text concepts in the work of R. M. Rilke. The objectives of the study are a    layer-by-layer analysis of key artistic concepts in their relevance to the national language code, in  identifying the functional characteristics of general cultural and individual-author elements of the  con-cept sphere, in determining the cognitive-stylistic features of the poet’s idiollect. It is shown that the in-dividual-author specifics of the RAUM conceptosphere by R.  M.  Rilke are distinguishing features of the categorization and specification of the semantics of concepts, whose names are the most common and significant lexemes with spatial semantics in the  poet’s work. The significance of the spatial dimension in  Rilke’s poetry is indicated by the  high recurrence of the exponents of the RAUM conceptosphere — the key concepts HAUS, ERDE, HIMMEL, WELTINNENRAUM together with other elements combined with them by synonymous, hyper-hyponymic and associative connection. It is proved that key concepts are a    means of expressing personal meanings, the invariant content of which can be defined as the  de-sire to overcome the limitations of earthly existence and to merge with a higher principle

There is a long history of the uses of the term 'catharsis'. Nowadays the term usually designates a process by which the production of strong emotions by adequate representations (literature, cinema, videogames, etc.) or by real events frees the subject (the reader, the spectator, the gamer, etc.) of those very emotions. Freud also had a specific understanding of what catharsis means, and he used the word to designate what would later become the “psychoanalytic method”. However, there is a long way between those modern understandings of catharsis and the original meaning Aristotle gave to the term in his ‘Poetics’. According to Aristotle, the catharsis produced by tragedy is linked to the emotions of pity and fear. Although pity and fear are two opposite affects depending on the position of the subject relatively to an event, the spectator of the tragedy is bound to experience both of them simultaneously because of the ethical similarity the playwright must keep between him and the tragic hero. But pity and fear are also two opposite affects on the physiological level: pity is a warm affect, fear a cold one. Catharsis is then a physiological balancing of pity by fear, of warmth by cold, and reciprocally, and this continuous suppression of excesses of temperature through the tragic imitation, while bringing a feeling of relief and pleasure, rids the spectator of all excessive affects. This physiological process of catharsis, as Aristotle understood it, has little to do with the current acceptions of the notion.

Вводится понятие бистабильного текста-по аналогии с понятием бистабильных изображений в когнитивной психологии. Бистабильные тексты-это тексты, которые могут одновременно прочитываться в двух или нескольких не пересекающихся смысловых планах. Для таких текстов характерна не много-значность, а четкая разделенность двух независимо существующих интерпрета-ций, каждая из которых равноправна и независима, когда актуализирована в соз-нании. Для бистабильных текстов, как и для бистабильных изображений, характерны эксклюзивность, неизбежность и случайность. В качестве примера бистабильного текста в статье анализируется стихотворение Владимира Строчко-ва «Последнее дело». Ключевые слова: когнитивная поэтика, бистабильность, бистабильный текст, многозначность. УДК 82-1/-9 Контактная информация: Ахапкин Денис Николаевич, кандидат филологиче-ских наук, доцент кафедры междисциплинарных исследований в области языков и литературы СПбГУ (Галерная ул., 58-60, Санкт-Петербург, 190000, Россия, d_akhapkin@spbu.ru) * Работа выполнена в рамках НИР СПбГУ «Русская формальная школа об особенно-стях восприятия текста: актуальность научного наследия», ID 37592584.

An increasing number of performance studies scholars and literary critics have a fascination with the interdisciplinary programme of the cognitive sciences. In this commentary on the essay by Bruce McConachie, I estimate to what extent this fascination could be reciprocated. Firstly, I will embrace McConachie's invitation to address performance-related empirical questions, and will build up on his tax-onomy of action in order to encourage research based on enactivist cognitive models. In this endeavour, performance studies may follow the lead of cognitive poetics. Secondly, I will suggest a threefold common ground for cognitive and performance studies, considering play as a candidate proto-performance. It is perhaps time for cognitive scientists to get more acquainted with performance studies, in as much as testable predictions can be formulated on their common ground.

"Kazakhstan, like other former Soviet states, seeks national self-definition. For Kazakhs, proverbs are the traditional resource for defining problems, making moral judgments, and suggesting remedies. As a result, the Kazakhstani government mandates instruction in Kazakh proverbs to shape the nation. How can anthropological and folkloristic tools be implemented to assess the language ideologies brought into play in this situation without crossing the line into conjecture?

Research into "national traits" using proverbs has validity issues since it relies on small proverb sets, fails to acknowledge the multi-voiced nature of language ideologies, and projects values onto the societies in question. More recent research utilizes larger proverb sets, surveys, and participant observation thus providing examples for addressing these shortcomings.

In my own research, I have incorporated these proverb research methods while also addressing the shortcomings of the "national traits" research by setting three delimitations of my research concerning language ideologies expressed by means of Kazakh proverbs. First, I focus on youth, the societal group most likely to change linguistically in an environment of language revitalization. Second, I only explore language ideologies concerning "community". Third, I have worked with a speech community rather than attempting nationwide analysis.

My field research was completed at Kazakh National Technical University in Almaty, Kazakhstan. I surveyed students concerning Kazakh proverbs addressing "community". Students reenacted the most familiar proverbs from the set, thereby narrativizing their language ideologies concerning "community".

I analyzed the data using an adaptation of Goffman's frame analysis. The language ideology showing the most tension was individualism-collectivism. This cultural theme is best understood as a continuum going from individual to the extended family / friends, and finally to the nation. In their narratives, students grappled with the paradigm of strength in numbers and "elders" in the skits repeatedly opposed individualism. In the reenactments, students' agency received its clearest expression in terms of proverbs about extended family / friends. Thus the language ideologies concerning "community" showed the following frame issues (boundaries): 1. Tension over where the speech community should position itself along the individualism-collectivism continuum; 2. Scripts against individualism; 3. Preponderance of adaptations for smaller-scale collectives."

Alberto Julián Pérez nos propone en Crónicas de tiempos difíciles una poética abierta y coloquial. Busca en el diálogo con los sujetos históricos la respuesta a sus interrogantes. Utiliza un lenguaje cotidiano, que carga de imágenes originales y plásticas. Pone en juego su profundo conocimiento del género en cada uno de sus poemas. Su matriz intelectual recoge aportes de la tradición poética hispanoamericana, con la que por momentos polemiza. Es a un tiempo poesía para el pueblo y poesía para poetas. Sus temas recurrentes son la vida política de su país y la poesía contemporánea.

Strung Together: The Cultural Currency of String Theory as a Scientific Imaginary is the first sustained study of string theory as a cultural phenomenon, synthesizing developments in continental philosophy of science, contemporary cognitive linguistics, and literary criticism to examine the role the imagination plays in the production and dissemination of string theory as scientific knowledge.

The book’s main claim is that the imaginative component of string theory is both integral and indispensable to it as a scientific discourse. In contrast to an orthodox scientific realism that sorts the “pure” concept of mathematical argument from the “illustrative” image of prose exposition, the book defines a scientific imaginary as a complex of images that: one, grounds scientific concepts in the ordinary cognitive linguistic processes that organize embodied human experience; two, mediates between human agency and the agency of the objects a theory posits as real phenomena; and three, situates the theory within a broader cultural context. Without this connective tissue, scientific knowledge such as string theory would have no epistemological footing. Within its technical discourse, an imaginary that complements mathematical argument allows string theorists to project themselves into the cosmos in such a way that strings as phenomena become substantiated and legitimized. It is this imaginary, rather than mathematical argument, that survives the move from technical discourse to popularizations and ultimately to literary texts. In effect, a string theory imaginary facilitates a virtual domestication of a cosmos that was heretofore remote, alien, and incomprehensible. By following the migration of the image of the string through these various discourses, we are able to see how string theory as a cosmic order, with all the cultural authority that this implies, is constructed.

The book aims to effectively describe, explore and explain serial fiction. Provided approach – serial fiction poetics – aims to (1) present a systemic explanation of serial fiction, (2) capture a variability of artistic possibilities of serial narrative and, (3) offer tools for the analysis of actual serial works. Its concept of seriality serves as foundation for the first and second aims; it remains as mere background for analytical hypotheses with regard to the third aim. Serial fiction poetics assumes the presence of a space-time continuum, which is created by the work through interaction with its audience. This is process is termed a fictional macroworld: narrated stories take place within its conditions and settings. Each episode of a serial constitutes an episodic world; seriality denotes a relationship between the state of affairs in a macroworld at the end of a current episode and the state of affairs in the macroworld at the end of the previous one. Depending on the intensity of connectedness between these two states and the relations of fictional characters to them, the book presents a typology of seriality, which serves as a functional and heuristic categorization, yet not as a substantive one: a separate, a non-sequential, a semisequential, a sequential, a disrupted. The book is divided into three parts. The first part of the book gives a systemic explanation of seriality, using the five types top-down. The second part of the book explores variable possibilities of serial narrative. The third part of the book attempt to offer the greatest possible degree of aesthetic sensitivity towards those works analysed and those explanations presented. The three parts develop and transform, with respect to these three aims, which differ from each other but are also interrelated, only to answer the questions posed, in correspondence with the individual dimensions of serial fiction poetics, in ways that are at the same time systematic and aesthetically sensitive.
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Každý den čteme, posloucháme či sledujeme všeliká vyprávění na pokračování, která se vracejí k týmž postavám, příběhům či světům. Jak jsou vystavěna? Kterak vedou naši pozornost? Lze jim vůbec porozumět coby samostatným dílům? Odpovědi hledá filmový teoretik Radomír D. Kokeš (autor knihy Rozbor filmu) na příkladu televizních seriálů, jež vysvětluje právě skrze jejich vnitřní uspořádání, práci s divákem a hledání jednotného přístupu k různorodým dílům. Výklad je rozdělen do tří oddílů a jeho názornost posiluje množství rozmanitých příkladů, dílčích rozborů i rozsáhlejších podrobných analýz seriálů, které čtenář zná či možná bude chtít poznat. Kniha Světy na pokračování nabízí zcela nový pohled na fenomén seriálového vyprávění, jímž může zaujmout odborníky stejně jako fanoušky.

Psycholinguistic research has shown that conceptual metaphors influence how people produce and understand language (e.g., Gibbs 1994, 2017a; Kövecses, 2010; Jacobs & Kinder 2017). So far, investigations have mostly paid attention to non-poetic metaphor comprehension. This focus stems from the original discovery of Conceptual Metaphor Theory that much of everyday, non-poetic language is metaphorical. The present study aims to expand this focus and explores whether people access conceptual metaphors during poetry interpretation. To answer this question, we conducted a psycholinguistic experiment in which thirty-seven participants, all L1 speakers of English, completed two tasks. In each task, participants read excerpts of poetry containing conceptual metaphors before selecting or rating items that indicated their implicit and explicit awareness of the conceptual metaphors. The results of both tasks show that participants retrieve conceptual metaphors when reading poetry. This provides...

The paper is located in the field of cognitive poetics and its general aim is to explore cognitive processes underlying the idiosyncrasy of a reader's narrative engagement on the level of texture. By introducing the notion of texture, Peter Stockwell (2009) added the third level of a reading experience, situated above a text (level 1) and textuality (level 2). While textuality present in text's stylistic patterns is the "outcome of the workings of shared cognitive mechanics, evident in texts and readings," texture is defined as the "experienced quality of textuality" (Stockwell, Texture-A Cognitive Aesthetics of Reading 1). In other words, texture must involve a reader's aesthetic positioning, but it also "requires aesthetics to be socially situated" (Stockwell 191; emphasis added). The paper focuses on Hanya Yanagihara's novel A Little Life (2015) which has been selected due to its added complexity stemming from the fact that the chapters have alternating narrators. In the book a computational analysis is applied to the narratives of the three focalizers to trace and compare the positive and negative emotional valence of the texts with the use of R-environment software. It is argued that where intradiegetic perspectivizing entities (focalizers/narrators) are multiple, indicating and creating a mental representation of the main protagonist involves a particularly complex process. The protagonist's ontological existence inside the narrative situation blends with the reader's mental capacity for synthesis along the edges of the multiple narrative perspectivization.

This collection gives sustained attention to the literary dimensions of children’s poetry from the eighteenth century to the present. While reasserting the importance of well-known voices, such as those of Isaac Watts, William Blake, Lewis Carroll, Christina Rossetti, A. A. Milne, and Carol Ann Duffy, the contributors also reflect on the aesthetic significance of landmark works by less frequently celebrated figures such as Richard Johnson, Ann and Jane Taylor, Cecil Frances Alexander and Michael Rosen. Scholarly treatment of children’s poetry has tended to focus on its publication history rather than to explore what comprises – and why we delight in – its idiosyncratic pleasures. And yet arguments about how and why poetic language might appeal to the child are embroiled in the history of children’s poetry, whether in Isaac Watts emphasising the didactic efficacy of “like sounds,” William Blake and the Taylor sisters revelling in the beauty of semantic ambiguity, or the authors of nonsense verse jettisoning sense to thrill their readers with the sheer music of poetry. Alive to the ways in which recent debates both
echo and repudiate those conducted in earlier periods, The Aesthetics of Children’s Poetry investigates the stylistic and formal means through which children’s poetry, in theory and in practice, negotiates the complicated demands we have made of it through the ages.

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This chapter argues for the necessity of a cognitive and holistic approach to autofiction—an approach that considers textual signposts in combination with the cognitive-affective dynamics of a text’s production and reception. On the basis of empirical data in the form of writers’ self-reports and psychological studies into the differences between fictional and factual reading modes, the chapter argues for and offers definitions of autofictional writing and autofictional reading modes. Their potential affordances and effects both for authors and readers are illustrated in relation to three works, which exhibit different degrees of fictionality: Philip Roth’s The Facts (1988), Olivia Laing’s Crudo (2018), and Ben Lerner’s 10:04 (2014).

Much previous research on the representation of depression and melancholy in the poetry of John Keats has taken a biographical approach, judging his poetry with reference to known facts about his life. This study is different. It takes a cognitive perspective in which metaphors of negative mental states are analysed from a conceptual point of view. To do this I adopt current approaches to analysing metaphor, primarily Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and Conceptual Integration Theory (CIT). I make use of identification procedures and the analysis of the following elements: source domains, conceptual metaphors, and cross-domain mappings. The study is based on a selection of poems; only the parts that relate to negative mental states are analysed. I begin by focusing on two poems (‘To Hope’ and ‘Ode to a Nightingale’) while testing my methodology, and then I broaden my focus to a Keats’s whole collection of poems in the final stage of my research. Analysing such metaphorical expressio...

Although current discussions of linguistic relativity tend to concen- trate on obligatory grammatical categories, the original architects of this school of thought, including Boas, Sapir, and Whorf, all argued strongly for the role of vocabulary in guiding human perception, especially in the culturally charged situations of everyday life. Taking the Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk languages of northwestern California as a case study, this article demonstrates the im- portance of vocabulary in conveying pervasive cultural ideologies, such as those associated with mythology, religion, folklore, or geographical systems of spatial orientation.Although current discussions of linguistic relativity tend to concen- trate on obligatory grammatical categories, the original architects of this school of thought, including Boas, Sapir, and Whorf, all argued strongly for the role of vocabulary in guiding human perception, especially in the culturally charged situations of everyday life. Taking the Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk languages of northwestern California as a case study, this article demonstrates the im- portance of vocabulary in conveying pervasive cultural ideologies, such as those associated with mythology, religion, folklore, or geographical systems of spatial orientation.

This work originates from the need to develop an integrated dynamic model of negation in discourse that is adequate for understanding the role of negation in an extensive and complex piece of discourse. Most work on negation is strongly influenced by traditional philosophical problems, but little work has been carried out in the area of discourse.

Approaches to negation within the functional-cognitive tradition tend to focus of specific areas of negation, its function as a speech act, or its cognitive model. Few attempts have been made to propose an integrated discourse model. Studies of negation with few exceptions tend to be limited to brief selections or isolated sentences. This book fills the gap in studies of negation in discourse by providing an up-to-date critical review of the state of the art in negation and by proposing a model that brings together the semantic, cognitive, and pragmatic features of negation, which are crucial for an understanding of its role in discourse.

The academic study of digital fiction has recently undergone a significant paradigm shift. Research has moved from a “first wave” of pure theoretical debate to a “second wave” of narratological, stylistic, and semiotic analysis. While the theoretical intricacies of second-wave digital fiction theory have been well debated (see Ciccoricco; Ensslin; Ensslin and Bell; Bell, Possible Worlds), the discipline and practice of analyzing digital fiction require a more systematic engagement and understanding than offered by much previous scholarship. With this critical need in mind, the scholars have has been exploring new avenues of defining and implementing approaches to analyzing digital fiction in order to develop a range of tools and associated terminology for digital fiction analysis and, in a related step, provide a body of analyses based on the systematic analyses of texts, which are substantiated by robust theoretical and terminological conclusions (e.g. Page and Thomas; Bell, Ensslin and Rustad). In line with that commitment this article provides a means of analyzing hyperlinks in web-based hypertext fiction. It begins by showing that hyperlinks in hypertext work associatively. It then argues that schema theory can be used to analyze the ways in which readers approach hypertext reading as well as how links function in hypertext fiction. The approach is demonstrated via an analysis of external links in a web-based fiction, 10:01 by Lance Olsen and Tim Guthrie. It shows that links are used to provide an ideological context to the narrative as well as forging a relationship between the fictional and actual world.

Monografia sleduje rôznorodé podoby súčasného umeleckého rozprávania a skúma jeho vzťah k iným typom narácie – najmä k textom, v ktorých nad estetickou funkciou prevažuje funkcia poznávacia či informačná. Kniha je rozdelená do štyroch častí. Prvá časť je teoretická, vytyčujú sa v nej základné problémové okruhy a pomenúvajú sa metódy, nástroje a modely, o ktoré sa v práci opieram a overujem ich použiteľnosť na vybraných príkladoch z prevažne slovanských literatúr. Druhá časť sleduje problematiku časopriestoru fikčného rozprávania, pričom v kapitole 2.1 sa analyzuje románový čas a priestor prevažne z jazykovo-kompozičného hľadiska (na príklade románu Sašu Sokolova Škola pre hlupákov), zatiaľ čo v nasledujúcej kapitole, venovanej ideovému prelínaniu literárnych a sociálno‑politických utópií, sa fikčnosť a temporalita chápu širšie než len ako výhradne naratívne kategórie: fungujú ako styčné plochy medzi významovým dianím imaginárneho „sveta textu“ a jeho historickým pozadím. Tretia časť pokračuje vo vytýčenom smere, len ako kontext sa už neponíma nadosobné historické pozadie, ale individuálna sféra praktického života, každodennosti. Predmet skúmania tu tvoria dva žánre na pomedzí umeleckej literatúry a faktografie – intímna korešpondencia a cestopisné zápisky. Posledná časť sa sústreďuje na niektoré osobitosti jazykového prejavu v modernom fikčnom naratíve, predovšetkým na jazyk ako prostriedok navodenia ilúzie hovorovej reči (tzv. skaz) či jazyk ako umelý autorský konštrukt, zastávajúci funkciu akéhosi rozprávačského „mimikry“. Práca má byť zároveň príspevkom do diskusie o súčasných podobách a problémoch literárnej komunikácie, dôležitou súčasťou každej kapitoly sú preto otázky týkajúce sa čitateľskej recepcie, interpretačných i prekladových úskalí toho‑ktorého textu či žánru.