Adjusting the Frame: Comments on Cognitivism and Literature

Abstract

This article focuses on the role of cognitivism in literary studies and,conversely, the role of literature in cognitivist approaches. Taking as its point of departure the preceding issue of Poetics Today (vol. 23, no. 1), a special issue on cognitive approaches to literature, this commentary addresses a number of issues related to, but also exceeding, the field of cognitive literary studies. These issues include the interrelation of the terms cognitive and literary and of human history versus evolution; the rhetoric and dynamics of paradigm change; the history of cognitivist inquiry, including different models of the study of the human mind; practical and fundamental questions about interdisciplinarity; and differences of approach in the sciences and the humanities.

Explanation, Interpretation, and Close Reading: The Progress of Cognitive Poetics; Cognitive Poetics in Practice

“…Once again, this is all true enough and understandable, but if this is the only kind of insight that a theory of ''scenarios'' can give us, then why should a literary scholar, or even a student, bother learning about scenarios? This same problem has been recurrent in the short history of cognitive, as well as in evolutionary-psychological, literary studies (Adler and Gross 2002;Jackson 2000Jackson , 2002. Despite regular, enthusiastic claims for radically new insights, the actual application of theories to texts has much too often produced interpretations that are painfully obvious.…”

Thematics, oder Warum ein Thema der Literatur überlieferungsfähig und kulturübergreifend wird

“…Literaturwissenschaftler, die sich getraut haben, sich an literaturwissenschaftlichen Debatten kognitiver Prägung zu beteiligen, sind bestimmt auch mit der berühmten und berüchtigten Kritik von Adler und Gross () vertraut, die die kognitive Wende in der Literaturwissenschaft als „old wine in new bottles“ bezeichnen. Adler und Gross haben beobachtet, dass kognitiv orientierte Literaturwissenschaftler in einen Teufelskreis geraten.…”

Reclaiming I. A. Richards

“…West's ongoing attention to Richards (for example, in Richards 2000, 2002 has been of great interest to us, and, indeed, we have previously engaged him in debate -specifically in an article in Poetics Today that he might not have seen at the time he was writing his book:…”