Postscript
What is the future of scholarship in cognitive poetics? This chapter provides a guide for possible new directions in the study of cognitive poetic experience. I claim that cognitive poetics can become a distinctive field of study if it embraces certain methodological and theoretical principles. These include attention to a wide range of different poetic experiences both within and across people, acknowledging both generalities and variations in how people create and interpret poetic artifacts, making scholars’ intuitive judgments more transparent in our reports of different research findings, addressing alternative hypotheses for different patterns of data, recognizing the different ways in which “understanding” may occur and be theoretically explained, and seeking connections between cognitive and noncognitive factors that shape people cognitive poetic experiences. We must embrace these new empirical challenges with open-minded vigor and open-hearted passion to truly create better conditions for cognitive poetics to both thrive and flourish.