Plots of the Mind: Narrative, Cognition and Feelings

JLT: Journal of Literary Theory, 2010

Michael Kimmel and Thomas Eder brought together established experts and younger researchers at the University of Vienna in May 2008 to reflect on and contribute to the »cognitive turn«, a major development in recent cultural theory and criticism. This turn, as the conference program said, grounds literary reception in general human psychology and everyday knowledge without losing sight of the specificity of literary aesthetics. It addresses central topics of literary structure and response in new ways. I will briefly contextualize the conference’s themes, review the papers and comment on them, then discuss them in light of some recent debates in the Journal of Literary Theory.

We present an overview and discussion of the Colloquium «Narrative, Media and Cognition», which took place at Porto's Centre of Catholic University of Portugal in July of 2015, under the organization of the Research Centre for Science and Technology of the Arts (CITAR). Several scholars of different areas presented research about the uses and advances in narrative study and practice in a broad range of areas, giving some important insights about the latest developments in Narrative Studies, Ontology of Narrative and the uses of Narrative in Art, Cinema, Performance, Journalism, Marketing and Literature, among other fields. After briefly describing the main points of each presentation in the Colloquium we try to draw some conclusions and possibilities raised by the Colloquium and take a glimpse of future paths that the use of Narrative can end up taking.

Despite a significant amount of works on cognitive poetics and narratology, a gap in the connection among experimental neuro-cognitive investigation, current explanatory theories in the scientific arena, and their applicability in the field of literary criticism still remains evident. In this paper, which is preliminary with respect to much wider-ranging research currently being carried out, we shall first of all attempt to identify some of the elements that consistently characterise diachronically examined literary fiction. The results of this analysis will be used to put together a model that identifies the initial drive to tell a story as being the transmission of a sense nucleus, rather than in the construction of a complex plot. Then some considerations will be offered on the possible biological-cognitive premises underpinning this tendency, which in their turn may be inserted into an interpretative framework that acknowledges the specific literary tradition in question. Finally, in the field of research into narrativity in literature, the interdisciplinary concept of style will be used to identify the most suitable one for connecting natural and cultural aspects.

Ela perguntou: -"Vovozinha, que braços tão magros, os seus, e que mãos tão trementes!" -"É porque não vou poder nunca mais te abraçar, minha neta..." -a avó murmurou.

Poetics Today, 2006

A biologist, about to dissect a frog, is startled to observe certain remarkable features: the superior glossiness of its coat, the strength of its sinews, the speed of its reactions, a look of what one might almost call the light of understanding in its eye. He sets it aside in its own cage and, as the days go by, observes other facets of this remarkable frog. Its croak is almost musical in its sustained baritone, like the throat singing of Siberian nomads. Over time, this special frog begins to draw the biologist from his experimental work on the tibial reflex of Rana catesbiana. He devotes more and more time to an appreciation and celebration of the achievements of Froggo Bullmeister, surely the most gifted and accomplished of its entire species. Here is an example closer to home: In an inquiry into the origins of racism, a sociologist has devised an experiment involving human subjects, each of whom is asked to write a page narrativizing what seems to be happening in a film clip that depicts the interactions of characters of different apparent races. The data she seeks are the spontaneous recurrences of certain keywords. But one response astonishes her. It is so eloquent, so deeply felt, that she finds herself moved to tears. Rashly, she breaks the protocol of anonymity and contacts this ragged, impoverished, untutored product of the ghetto. She encourages him to expand on what he has written. It turns out he has a trove of autobiographical fiction. Over time, she increasingly

“Isomorphism of knowledge Scientific projections on 20th and 21st century Literature” Conference at the University of Bucharest, 2019

Through the analysis of examples taken from a selection of works by Malcolm Bradbury, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Bernard Malamud, John Updike, and E.E. Cummings, this essay explores the mental processes underlying the creation of literary discourse production from a cognitive linguistic perspective. It investigates how cases of metaphorical meaning construction, categorial formation, and the uses of blending, compression, and conceptual integration help these writers to construct possible or alternative worlds of fiction, interpret and reshape common areas of experience, as well as address individual conflicts and redefine identities, by re-examining and re-categorizing emotions and social roles.

2012

First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Peter Stockwell, for his encouragement and support throughout the thesis and for allowing me to take initiatives and to develop my own ideas and arguments. Iwould also like to thank my second supervisor, Dr. Violeta Sotirova, for her interest in the project and her valuable comments. Moreover, I am indebted to Professor Zoltan Dornyei, for allowing me to attend the Research Methods module and for giving me advice on the design of the study.