Subjective time, place, and language in Lisa Gorton’s The Life of Houses

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-125
Author(s):  
Isabelle Wentworth
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Stylistic Analysis ◽  
Subjective Time ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Mental Functioning ◽  
Cognitive Poetics ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Experience Of Time ◽  
Sense Of Time

Abstract Fiction has often shown that our sense of time can be affected by the spaces and things around us. In particular, the houses in which characters live can make the passing of time dilate, accelerate, even to seem to skip or stop. These interactions between place and time may represent more than metaphor or literary artifice, but rather genuine cognitive processes of embodied subjective time. This is demonstrated in an analysis of Lisa Gorton’s The Life of Houses, supplementing traditional stylistic analysis with cognitive poetics to explore an influence of the central house, the Sea House, on the young protagonist’s experience of time. Exploring the text through the fictional mental functioning of a main character offers a new way to understand The Life of Houses, and, more broadly, the cognitive approach set out in this article—one which takes into account various active and interactive influences on subjective time—may have implications for the interpretation of other works which analyse the connections between time, place, and self.

Metaphor and Intertextuality: A Cognitive Approach to Intertextual Meaning-Making in Metafictional Fantasy Novels

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary-Anne Shonoda
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Cognitive Poetics ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Mapping Model ◽  
Fantasy Novels ◽  
Narrative Functions ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Metaphoric Expression

Scholars in children's literature have frequently commented on the humorous and ideological functions of intertextuality. There has however, been little discussion of the cognitive processes at work in intertextual interpretation and how they provide readers with more interpretive freedom in the meaning-making process. Drawing on research from the field of metaphor studies and the interdisciplinary area of cognitive poetics, this article suggests that the interpretation of foregrounded intertextuality is analogous to the interpretation of metaphoric expression. Current models of metaphor interpretation are discussed before I outline my own intertextuality-based variant. The cross-mapping model developed is then applied to literary intertexts in Inkheart and cultural intertexts in Starcross in order to show how the model might work with intertexts of varying degrees of specificity and that serve different narrative functions. The explanatory power of the cross-mapping model is not limited to cases where elements in the primary storyworld can be directly matched with those in the intertext, but extends to instances that involve a recasting of the intertext and thus retelling as in Princess Bride.

scholarly journals Schema Theory and Text- worlds: A Cognitive Stylistic Analysis of Selected Literary Texts

2020 ◽  
pp. 52
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Ability ◽  
Real World ◽  
Background Knowledge ◽  
Schema Theory ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Stylistic Analysis ◽  
Literary Language ◽  
Cognitive Poetics ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
World Theory

Cognitive stylistics also well-known as cognitive poetics is a cognitive approach to language. This study aims at examining literary language by showing how Schema Theory and Text World Theory can be useful in the interpretation of literary texts. Further, the study attempts to uncover how readers can connect between the text world and the real world. Putting it differently, the study aims at showing how the interaction between ‘discourse world’ and ‘text world’. How readers can bring their own experience as well as their background knowledge to interact with the text and make interpretive connections. Schema and text world theories are useful tools in cognitive stylistic studies. The reader's perception of a particular text world depends on her/his existing schema during the process of interpretation. The selected texts for the study are "Strange Meeting" by Wilfred Owen, "In Winter" by Corbett Harrison and the opening passage of David Lodge's novel Changing Places which are intended to show how the two theories can be integrated to account for the way in which text worlds are perceived. So as a result, readers start establishing meaning based on their schemata and these meanings change through adding a new one. The cognitive ability to understand literary texts and how readers build mind worlds is a crucial aim in cognitive poetics. An in-depth cognitive stylistic analysis reveals significant points about reading and interpreting the selected literary texts by providing a way of thinking about background knowledge and how the individual's experience would influence their interpretation and viewing of the text world.

From Bergson to Thomas Mann: an Experience of Time in the Novel The Magic Mountain

2021 ◽  
pp. 177-187
Author(s):  
Irina I. Blauberg ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Time Characteristic ◽  
Thomas Mann ◽  
Subjective Time ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Special Role ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Experience Of Time ◽  
External Time

The article compares some features of the interpretation of time, characteristic of Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain, with the concept of time developed by Henri Bergson. In The Magic Mountain, which Mann called a novel about time, two forms of time are distinguished, as in Bergson’s Time and Free Will: objective, chronological, which can be measured, and subjective, internal, not subject to measurement and calculation. The main theme of the book is the spiri­tual maturation of the main character, Hans Castorp, who unexpectedly remains for seven years in a high-altitude hospital, where the “external” time is almost imperceptible due to the monotony of the usual forms of existence. This time is “blurred”, gradually losing its meaning for the hero. There is, indeed, the com­plex work of the soul, the understanding of life, illness and death, love experi­ences, understanding philosophy and culture in conversations with “mentors” – heir to the traditions of the Enlightenment Settembrini and Jesuit Naphtha. Berg­son associated this interpenetration of experiences, impressions, and perceptions with “duration” as an internal, subjective time. It plays a special role in Castorp’s existential experience. At the same time, along with these aspects, which encou­rage comparison with the ideas of Bergson, the novel contains other themes re­lated to time and referring to other philosophical traditions. The main ones are the themes of illness and death, and also, partly related to the first, the theme of eternity, which appears in different angles.

A cognitive approach to cumulative technological culture is useful and necessary but only if it also applies to other species

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thibaud Gruber
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Technological Culture ◽  
Social Learning Processes

Abstract The debate on cumulative technological culture (CTC) is dominated by social-learning discussions, at the expense of other cognitive processes, leading to flawed circular arguments. I welcome the authors' approach to decouple CTC from social-learning processes without minimizing their impact. Yet, this model will only be informative to understand the evolution of CTC if tested in other cultural species.

The Meaning of Children's Poetry: A Cognitive Approach

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Coats
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
The Body ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Holding Environment ◽  
Cognitive Poetics ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Communal Life ◽  
Clear Sense ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Children's Poetry

Critical attention to children's poetry has been hampered by the lack of a clear sense of what a children's poem is and how children's poetry should be valued. Often, it is seen as a lesser genre in comparison to poetry written for adults. This essay explores the premises and contradictions that inform existing critical discourse on children's poetry and asserts that a more effective way of viewing children's poetry can be achieved through cognitive poetics rather than through comparisons with adult poetry. Arguing that children's poetry preserves the rhythms and pleasures of the body in language and facilitates emotional and physical attunement with others, the essay examines the crucial role children's poetry plays in creating a holding environment in language to help children manage their sensory environments, map and regulate their neurological functions, contain their existential anxieties, and participate in communal life.

The End of Resilience? Managing Vulnerability Through Temporal Resourcing and Resisting

2021 ◽  
pp. 104225872110538
Author(s):  
Oana Branzei ◽  
Ramzi Fathallah
Keyword(s):  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Coping Skills ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Subjective Time ◽  
First Person ◽  
Step Process ◽  
Objective Time ◽  
Experience Of Time

We induce a first-person conceptualization of entrepreneurial resilience. Our seven-year, two-study ethnography shows that entrepreneurs enact resilience as a four-step process of managing vulnerability: they richly experience episodes of adversity, self-monitor across episodes, reassess personal thresholds and reconcile challenges with coping skills. Entrepreneurs manage vulnerability by (1) modifying ( stretching and shrinking) objective time and (2) changing their subjective experience of time as working with or against the clock through temporal resourcing or temporal resisting. We extend the theory and practice of entrepreneurial resilience by elaborating the interplay of objective and subjective time in managing vulnerability in recurrent and unprecedented crises.

The Experience of Time During William’s Invasion

2020 ◽  
pp. 16-51
Author(s):  
Tony Claydon
Keyword(s):  
Communication Technology ◽  
Fast Moving ◽  
Experience Of Time ◽  
The Face ◽  
Sense Of Time ◽  
William Iii ◽  
Modern Sense

Chapter one examines reactions to the fast-moving events of the autumn of 1688, when James II’s regime collapsed in the face of an invasion by William III. It demonstrates that some features of the reaction illustrate a ‘modern’ sense of time with an unstable present shaping a fluid future (especially the acceleration of time produced by fast-flowing events, and faster flowing news); but it also shows that interruptions in communication technology disrupted this modernity, leading to a fragmented sense of time’s passage, which encouraged the sort of simplistic scripting and produced the sort of bewilderment that may be characteristic of the postmodern condition.

Picturing Scripts: A Combined Narrative, Social Semiotic and Cognitive Approach to Visual Narrativity

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cindie Maagaard
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Contextual Knowledge ◽  
Combined Approach ◽  
Future Tense ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
The One ◽  
Cognitive Perspectives

Abstract This article explores visual narrativity through the case of prospective, or future-tense, narratives realized through visual images. Addressing the challenges of representing narrative elements of temporality, events and experience in a single, static image, it proposes an analytical framework combining social semiotic, contextual and cognitive perspectives. In doing so, it argues that a combined approach enhances our ability to understand the interplay between on the one hand the image-internal visual cues of temporality and modality that activate the viewer’s imagination and narrative inferences, and on the other, the processes by which such inferences are made, including the influence of the viewer’s contextual knowledge and cognitive processes in guiding them. The article uses architectural renderings as material for analysis, because they are exemplary of how visual images invite viewers to imagine the kinds of activities and experiences that can unfold in a future setting and thus make inferences about temporality, event and experience beyond the image’s isolated moment.

Deixis in literature

2008 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-150
Author(s):  
Reuven Tsur
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Cognitive Poetics

This is a theoretical and methodological statement of what isn’t and what is Cognitive poetics. It is focused on Peter Stockwell’s discussion of deixis; but, I claim, much of what I have to say on Stockwell’s work would apply to some degree to the work of many other critics. I argue that Stockwell translates traditional critical terms into a “cognitive” language, but does not rely on cognitive processes to account for issues related to the texts discussed; and that he uses these terms to label or classify poetic expressions rather than point out their interaction in generating poetic effects. The present paper does not presume to tell what is the “correct” way to handle those terms, but attempts to give examples of how the same terms could be used with reference to cognitive processes, so as to account for poetic effects.

scholarly journals The experience of time: neural mechanisms and the interplay of emotion, cognition and embodiment

2009 ◽  
Vol 364 (1525) ◽  
pp. 1809-1813 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Wittmann ◽  
Virginie van Wassenhove
Keyword(s):  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Pharmacological Interventions ◽  
Time Intervals ◽  
Experience Of Time ◽  
Cognitive Neurosciences ◽  
Sense Of Time ◽  
Introductory Paper ◽  
Behavioural Experiments ◽  
The Brain

Time research has been a neglected topic in the cognitive neurosciences of the last decades: how do humans perceive time? How and where in the brain is time processed? This introductory paper provides an overview of the empirical and theoretical papers on the psychological and neural basis of time perception collected in this theme issue. Contributors from the fields of cognitive psychology, psychiatry, neurology and neuroanatomy tackle this complex question with a variety of techniques ranging from psychophysical and behavioural experiments to pharmacological interventions and functional neuroimaging. Several (and some new) models of how and where in the brain time is processed are presented in this unique collection of recent research that covers experienced time intervals from milliseconds to minutes. We hope this volume to be conducive in developing a better understanding of the sense of time as part of complex set of brain–body factors that include cognitive, emotional and body states.

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