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About Diegesis In Mind

Diegesis in Mind aims to encourage and support the use of cognitive (‘mind’) science to study ancient narrative (‘diegesis’). We intend to be an intellectual nucleus for continuing scholarly dialogue about methods, standards, prospects, and limitations of using cognitive disciplines to study ancient narrative texts and other media across disciplines.
This project is a collaboration between the University of St Andrews and the University of Bonn, supported by the British Academy and Uni Bonn Digitization Resources.

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BLOG POST | 1. June 2023

Peter Stockwell and Cognitive Poetics: Interview, Part 1

June special! This is the first of four weekly instalments of an interview with Peter Stockwell, Professor of English at the University of Nottingham and author of Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction (2d ed.; Routledge, 2019). Here, Peter describes how he began to use of cognitive science to study literature, and simultaneously gives us a window into how cognitive science entered literary studies altogether. ...
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BLOG POST | 1. June 2023

Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Interpretation

The cognitive structuring of language points, furthermore, to the importance of metaphors. Cognitive models, populated by encyclopedic knowledge, provide the patterns through which we apprehend our experiences. Thus, experience is never unmediated. Language, therefore, is ultimately metaphorical since our apprehensions of reality are always representational. ...
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BLOG POST | 2. May 2023

Cognitive Linguistics and Characterization in Euripides’ Electra

Evert van Emde Boas explains two ways that "cognitive sciences might help us understand what goes on in literary characterization" in Euripides' Electra: "First, they might help us get to grips with how the interpretation of characters actually works, that is, with what goes on in our brains and bodies when we meet characters in literature, drama, or film." And second, these insights "can help us understand issues of literary ...
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BLOG POST | 1. April 2023

How Cognitive Linguistics Unlocks the Secrets of Artistic Expression in the Art of the Middle East (4th c. BCE to 8th c. CE)

We hear from Rina Talgram (Professor of Art History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) on the benefit of using cognitive linguistics to explore the interactive nature of visual images of the Middle East from the Hellenistic period (4th c. BCE) to the Umayyad period (end of the 8th c. BCE). ...
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BLOG POST | 1. April 2023

Cognitive linguistics and Rabbinic Jewish Literature

Listen to Michal Bar-Asher Siegal (Prof of Rabbinic Judaism at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Diegesis in Mind board member) discuss how cognitive linguistics helps her to read rabbinic literature. ...
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BLOG POST | 1. April 2023

Recap of Characters in Mind Conference

Missed the conference? Here's the recap of Characters in Mind: The Migration of Characters in Ancient Jewish, Ancient Christian & Greco-Roman Literature and Art, an International and Interdisciplinary Conference at the University of Bonn, 8-10 February 2023 ...
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BLOG POST | 29. August 2022

Welcome to Diegesis In Mind

Diegesis in Mind aims to encourage and support the use of cognitive (‘mind’) science to study ancient narrative (‘diegesis’). We intend to be an intellectual nucleus for continuing scholarly dialogue about methods, standards, prospects, and limitations of using cognitive disciplines to study ancient narrative texts and other media across disciplines.
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BLOG POST | 1. February 2023

Cognition, Prepositions, and Point of View: Interview with Rachel & Mike Aubrey

Rachel and Mike Aubrey, with SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics) International, talk about their translation work and research on prepositions and point of view in cognitive perspective. ...
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BLOG POST | 1. February 2023

Thinking and Feeling like the Ancients? Studying Emotion and Cognition through Reader Response

From a cognitive viewpoint, emotions are, at least in their basic design, a pan-human, universal phenomenon, and narrative in particular is intimately bound up with emotion. If basal embodied mechanisms play a central role in readers’ processing and experiencing of narrative texts, it cannot be denied that reader responses must always be similar in certain respects, even if the readers come from very different times and cultural backgrounds. ...
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BLOG POST | 1. January 2023

Characters in Mind: How Readers Recognize Literary Persons across Narratives

Binge-watching became a habit for my kids and me long before the Covid pandemic. It has already been a few years since the four of us devoured all Shrek movies together in a single weekend, but I remember being amazed that our children, without giving it much thought, recognized among the cast Cinderella, Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, and a bunch of other characters they knew from our bedtime readings. What really got ...
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BLOG POST | 1. December 2022

Cognition, Grammar, and Reading Ancient Narratives: An Interview with Steve Runge

Stephen E. Runge, author of Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament: A Practical Introduction for Teaching and Exegesis (Hendrickson, 2010), talks about how cognitive linguistics as applied to grammar can help explain how humans process ancient narratives. ...
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