Potential and Actual Cognitive-Emotional Engagement with Characters: A Response to Michael Whitenton and Bonnie Howe & Eve Sweetser

This article addresses the contributions by Michael Whitenton, and Bonnie Howe and Eve Sweetser, in the present volume. I endorse all three contributors’ use of cognitive-linguistic approaches, highlighting their helpfulness for the reconstruction of frames that shape the reading experience of audiences located in different historical and cultural contexts. The two chapters meticulously trace the complexity and dynamics of understanding exemplary biblical characters. I emphasise that the level of attention to linguistic detail displayed by cognitive stylistics is a desideratum for a reader-oriented analysis of a text’s potential reading effects. At the same time, I question some assumptions in cognitive linguistics concerning the cognitive-emotional processes real readers are actually likely to perform. The two chapters serve as a starting point for me to discuss general tendencies in recent cognitive and empirical literary studies, which have perhaps overstated the intensity and impact of some processes, while overlooking others that may be just as important.

Ancient Characters and Contemporary Readers: A Response to Elizabeth E. Shively & Jan Rüggemeier and Cornelis Bennema

In this response essay, which culminates with an application of my theory of narrative empathy to the Parable of the Good Samaritan, I comment on an article by Cornelis Bennema and engage with the ideas in the framing, introductory essay by Jan Rüggemeier and Elizabeth E. Shively. In the course of carrying out these tasks, I also offer what I hope will be broadly useful comments on fictional and nonfictional contexts for character construction, on characters and characterization, and on the way diverse actual readers engage with characters. This essay concludes with some thoughts on narrative empathy, responding to the final section of Rüggemeier and Shively’s essay, which offers comprehensive overview of empathy and sympathy as aspects of emotional reading.

How Readers Construct New Testament Characters: The Calling of Peter in the Gospels in Cognitive-Narratological Perspective

The discipline of cognitive narratology applies insights of cognitive linguistics to narrative analysis. This study seeks to demonstrate the value of cognitive narratology by exploring the role of the reader and the extent of the reader’s knowledge in constructing characters. While traditional narrative criticism often limits itself to the world of the text, cognitive narratology recognizes that the reader’s knowledge from other texts and the real world also contributes to the construction of characters. This study will show that the extent of the reader’s literary and social knowledge of a text affects the construction of characters. As a case study, we will examine the calling of Peter in the canonical Gospels and show how four readers with varying degrees of knowledge will arrive at different constructions of Peter’s character.

How Audience Members Envision New Testament Characters: Mental Character Models, Blending, and the Reception of Luke 1:5–2:52

In the Gospel of Luke 1–2, the narrator focuses on two couples and their (future) sons. The plot of the narrative emphasizes the main characteristics of the characters, which in turn accentuate important characteristics of God. Audience members construct these characters like real-life persons based on the discourse aspect (textual features which indicate character traits, plots, focalization, etc.) and the suggestion aspect (memories, emotions, schemata that are activated or primed, etc.). In this article, the construction of characters is analyzed with insights into mental character models and social schemata. The linear presentation of information in orally performed narratives structures the first part of the analysis. The latter part draws on conceptual blending theory to explore how the character of God is constructed based on selected information projected from the utterances of the other characters to the blended space.

Towards a Blending-Based Approach to Early Christian Characters: Nicodemus as a Test Case

This article presents a blending-based approach to characters in early Christian narratives. Even cognitive approaches to complex characters (including my previous work) tend to frame character development as a primarily linear unidirectional process. However, the human mind integrates incoming information through processes that are more recursive than linear and more synergistic than summative. I propose that Cognitive Blending Theory, pioneered by Gilles Fauconnier & Mark Turner, provides a heuristic approach that better accounts for the complexity of cognitive information processing. First, I articulate a blending-based approach to ancient characters. Next, I show the validity of such an approach by modeling the blends for each of Nicodemus’s appearances in John’s gospel, focusing on the novel insights only available through blending. As will become apparent, these blends are interrelated, building upon and challenging one another on the path toward a complete characterization of “Nicodemus” across John’s gospel. I conclude with brief reflections on the future prospects of blending-based character studies.

Cognitive Linguistic Models for Analyzing Characterization in a Parable: Luke 10:25–37 The Compassionate Samaritan

This study employs an array of cognitive linguistic (cl) models to reveal some of the details in how contemporary readers understand and interpret characters in a New Testament parable, the one often tagged “The Good Samaritan.” It also uses cognitive narrative analysis to explore how Luke constructs and develops the dialog partners in the pericope and the characters in the parable. The larger goal is to use cl to reveal some of the ways in which meanings are evoked, constructed, constrained and opened up. The parable is embedded in a larger narrative and immediate co-text, its characters selected from the stock of Lukan personae. The study explains how narrative spaces are built up; how characters serve as anchors and links to the larger narrative; and how viewpoint shifts proliferate as the story unfolds. The Lukan narrator makes Jesus’ viewpoint clear: “Do this, and you will live!” Readers are implicitly invited to identify with the compassionate character of the parable and emulate him. But the opening question and closing dialog shape the parable’s point, expanding its trajectory beyond mere moral rule revision or definitions of “neighbor” or even of “good” character. This parable allows readers to imagine with Luke a way of life lived in the light of the new epoch Jesus is announcing and inaugurating.

Dramatis Personae in the Acts of Peter: Character Identification and the Conveyance of Ethical Values

The Roman senator Marcellus plays a prominent role among the considerable number of characters mentioned in the apocryphal Acts of Peter. He was very important for the Christian community, and his house was a central meeting place for widows, orphans, foreigners, and the poor, before it became the residence of Simon Magus and his followers. By applying a specific approach of cognitive narratology and by taking serious an active participation of readers in analyzing a character more closely, this study intends to analyze the extent to which such an approach might help to perceive and understand Marcellus more appropriately and to highlight his function within the story and his impact on readers.

Emotion, Memory, Meaning, Directions: A Response to Kirsten Marie Hartvigsen and Thomas J. Kraus

This response article reviews the contributions of Kirsten Marie Hartvigsen and Thomas Kraus to this special issue, and uses them as the basis for a discussion of some theoretical and methodological issues relevant to cognitive narratology and cognitive literary studies more broadly. Without offering substantial answers itself, the response poses questions concerning (i) the compatibility of different scientific frameworks used in cognitive models of characterization, particularly in the light of currently dominant ‘4ea’ models of cognition (there is a particular focus on the relationship between affective and (other) cognitive aspects of reader response, and on the role of memory); and (ii) the adaptability of cognitive models to dealing with “synthetic” and “thematic” (as opposed to “mimetic”) aspects of literary character. A brief conclusion argues for two-way traffic between the cognitive sciences and literary criticism.

Introduction: Towards a Cognitive Theory of New Testament Characters: Methodology, Problems, and Desiderata

This Introduction provides an overview of a cognitive-narratological approach to characters and characterization in New Testament narratives. We begin by comparing conventional and cognitive approaches to New Testament characters and characterization, and delineating a practical methodology designed to sensitize readers to a variety of interpretative possibilities that arise from the cognitive turn within narratology. Afterwards, we apply that methodology in three ways. First, we acquaint readers with the prospect of tracing characters within one New Testament narrative. Then, we hint at the analysis of character migration, that is, a character’s development across more than one narrative. Finally, we provide insight into the analysis of character emotions and the readers’ empathy with characters. To illustrate these aspects, we focus on examples from the Gospel of Mark.