LA PALABRA IMAGEN: ESTUDIO SEMIÓTICO-COGNITIVO DE LA POESÍA VISUAL DE FERNANDO MILLÁN, FELIPE BOSO Y CLARA JANÉS

El presente trabajo propone un estudio de la llamada poesía visual mediante un método integrado que hará confluir las herramientas de análisis de la teoría semiótica con las consideraciones de la Poética Cognitiva respecto a este tipo de objetos intermediales. De esta manera, de un estudio teórico inicial que permitirá extraer estas herramientas cognitivo-semióticas de análisis, se pasará a un estudio práctico, mediante el método previamente desarrollado, de obras concretas y variadas de poesía visual, seleccionadas entre la creación de Fernando Millán, Felipe Boso y Clara Janés. Abstract: The present work develops a study on the so-called visual poetry by means of an integrated method which will fuse the analytical tools of the semiotic theory with considerations of Cognitive Poetics about this kind of intermedial objects. Therefore, from a theoretical study which will provide us with this cognitive-semiotic analytical tools, a practical study will follow with the analysis of specific and varied works of visual poetry, which will be selected within the works of Fernando Millán, Felipe Boso and Clara Janés.

Nastoletnia krucjata przeciwko dorosłym i kulturze popularnej w „Los poseídos de Luna Picante” Martína Sancii

The paper focuses on an Argentinian book for children by Martín Sancia titled Los poseídos de Luna Picante [The Possessed from Pungent Moon] from 2014. The research problem revolves around the expectations about childhood and youth literature that the analysed text appears to challenge. Tools employed in this work come primarily from cognitive poetics. The study explores the ways in which the text touches upon the place of children’s discourse in relation to the adults’ one within the system. Among these the most engaging seem to be an image of the child as an abject, metafictional techniques, the gothic, and the gore effect. In its conclusions, the study shows that all the strategies used in the analysed texts aim to blur the boundaries between child and adult discourses and, consequently, provide a space for a non-disempowering author–reader/adult–child interaction.

Poetyka kognitywna dwie dekady później. Rozważania wokół drugiego wydania Cognitive Poetics Petera Stockwella (2020)

The article discusses cognitive poetics as an important theoretical framework in contemporary literary studies, in the context of the publication of the second, revised edition of Peter Stockwell’s Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction (2020). First, the authors discuss critical comments put forward by scholars with respect to Stockwell’s earlier studies in cognitive poetics, and next, from a literary-studies perspective they carry out an overall assessment of the revisions and modifications introduced in the book’s current edition. Irrespective of some critical remarks, there is no doubt that thanks to the changes, the inspirational value of Stockwell’s book has been enhanced.

Hermeneutics, Practical Wisdom, and Cognitive Poetics

It may seem trivial to stress that our background knowledge is essential for literary interpretation, but what about practical wisdom, the inarticulable background knowledge? Can we articulate all the things that we know and are able to do in literary interpretation? Are we fully aware of all the assumptions behind our literary arguments? Instead of generally reflecting the status of hermeneutics at a macro-level, this essay argues that one way for hermeneutics to remain meaningful today is not to be tried as a theoretical whole, but as a source of sporadic inspiring arguments. To show that, at a micro-level, we can evaluate the strength of these arguments case by case without generalizing, we analyze from a cognitive perspective Gadamer’s argument that practical wisdom is crucial for literary interpretation. Using cognitive science to provide insights for literary study does not make the latter subservient to the former. Rather, cognitive poetics is a two-way street where each field complements the other by providing hypotheses and functioning as a testing ground. By demonstrating that we know more than we can tell in literary interpretation and that the three features Aristotle and Gadamer attribute to practical wisdom (contingent, inarticulable, and only learnable through experience) are at least tentatively empirically justified, this essay argues that hermeneutics has offered a noteworthy example for the two-way street of cognitive poetics.

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

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.

Multi-Addressee Nature of Works Intentionally Aimed at a Young Audience – an Opportunity or a Threat? In the Context of Hanna Dymel-Trzebiatowska’s “Philosophical and Translational Migrations in the Moomin Valley” (2019)

The article is based on the review of the book by Hanna Dymel-Trzebiatowska Philosophical and Translational Migrations in the Moomin Valley (2019). Interdisciplinary considerations concern the issue of the multi-addressee nature of works intentionally aimed at a young audience, and their basis is the analysis and interpretation of Tove Jansson’s series on Moomins, deeply rooted in philosophical contexts. In the interpretation of the saga of the Finnish writer, Dymel-Trzebiatowska refers to various aspects of the theory and practice of reception as well as to selected issues belonging to the area of theory and practice of translation. In interpretative contexts, the researcher also distinguishes psychoanalytical critique, cognitive poetics, existential philosophy, the broadly understood philosophy of ethics and childhood anthropology, thanks to which her book fits perfectly into contemporary discussions on the function, place, role and status of children’s literature, its meaning in the wider cultural circuit literary and – potentially – also its presence in the field of Polish studies.

The Rhetoric of “Bragoro”: The Philosophy Behind Akan Traditional Concept of Marriage

This paper discusses the intertextual relationship between the world of Akan Bragoro (puberty rites) song texts and the real world of Akans. The Akan Bragoro song texts are performed during Bragoro celebrations and the song texts define the Akan concept of sex and marriage within the parameters of traditional Akan philosophy. The paper uses qualitative research methods that are irrigated by ethnographic and stylistics approaches to text interpretation. The findings of the research indicate that texts of Akan Bragoro songs key all the meanings this traditional philosophy has to offer: sex is strictly a marital affair and marriage is for those who are prepared for it. The stylistics of the song texts also frame the epistemic of Akan love and that the basic condition of Akan conjugal love is a good character on the side of both the man and the woman. The paper further reveals that the Akan Bragoro song texts constitute the site where the precipitates of Akan marriage are provided and Bragoro initiates are introduced to the Akan way of life. These precipitates are rehearsed in performance year after year, making the Akan Bragoro an enduring cultural practice that guides the life of the Akans throughout all ages. Keywords: Performance, Bragoro song texts, Verbal art, Cognitive poetics, Tradition

Jak opisać dawne galicyjskie przedmieścia we współczesnym języku chińskim? Kognitywna analiza przekładów Sklepów cynamonowych Brunona Schulza

The article is an analysis of the description of the garden in Bruno Schulz’s The Cinnamon Shops (Sklepy cynamonowe) and its two translations into Chinese. Wei-Yun Lin-Górecka has translated Schulz’s prose from the original Polish, while Lu Yuan’s translation is primarily based on English versions of his work. The analysis employs methods drawn from cognitive poetics and some elements of cognitive theory of translation, especially Elżbieta Tabakowska’s ideas on imagery and translation equivalence. The study helped characterize a complex conceptual blend found in the description and trace structural changes caused by the translators’ specific decisions. The translations are characterized by a relatively high level of equivalence. The conceptual blends they comprise differ from the one created by Bruno Schulz mostly in terms of the described elements’ positions on the empathy scale, which are mainly dependent upon the translators’ manner of using the devices of animation and anthropomorphism.