Blog Archive | Diegesis In Mind

BLOG POST | 31. October 2025

MENTAL SPACE COMPRESSION IN ANCIENT MYTHS: THE CASE OF CATABATIC JOURNEYS (PART 3)

Part 3 of an interview in which Anna Bonifazi and Riccardo Ginevra share their interest in applying the cognitive-linguistic concept of compression to the analysis of ancient Greek and other ancient Indo-European myths. A particularly congenial script for such an application is the tale of catabatic journeys: mythological characters or heroes get the chance to enter the subterranean world with some purpose in mind, and manage to come back alive. ...

BLOG POST | 30. September 2025

Mental space compression in ancient myths: The case of catabatic journeys (Part 2)

Part 2 of an interview in which Anna Bonifazi and Riccardo Ginevra share their interest in applying the cognitive-linguistic concept of compression to the analysis of ancient Greek and other ancient Indo-European myths. A particularly congenial script for such an application is the tale of catabatic journeys: mythological characters or heroes get the chance to enter the subterranean world with some purpose in mind, and manage to come back alive. ...

BLOG POST | 17. September 2025

Mental space compression in ancient myths: The case of catabatic journeys (Part 1)

In this interview, Anna Bonifazi and Riccardo Ginevra share their interest in applying the cognitive-linguistic concept of compression to the analysis of ancient Greek and other ancient Indo-European myths. A particularly congenial script for such an application is the tale of catabatic journeys: mythological characters or heroes get the chance to enter the subterranean world with some purpose in mind, and manage to come back alive. The interviewer, Cristóbal Pagán ...

BLOG POST | 1. July 2024

‘GOD as DOMESTIC ECONOMIST’ Cognitive Metaphors Actualized in the Minds of Paul’s Addressees

By employing the concepts of pottery and pruning from the domain of domestic economy, Paul constructs metaphors to elucidate the nature of God's activity. The contribution focuses on the valuable insights that cognitive semantics offers in interpreting these metaphors. ...

BLOG POST | 1. June 2024

Plot, Embodiment, and the Materiality of the Book with Chariton’s Callirhoe

When I prepared my lecture on the early Greek novel Callirhoe by Chariton for our undergraduate students in Comparative Literature a couple of years ago, I was wondering how to bring this text, probably about two thousand years old, to my students. While re-reading the novel it struck me that Chariton actually provided a feasible framework in the text itself. ...

BLOG POST | 1. April 2024

Cognitive Linguistics and Characterization in Euripides’ Electra

(First published on May 2, 2023) 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 ...

BLOG POST | 1. March 2024

What does Language have to do with Cognitive Framing?

As a linguist – and in particular, one working with older texts as data– a major benefit of cognitive framing for textual analysis is the awareness that I’m constrained by knowledge about human cognition. If I can’t read long-ago authors’ or redactors’ minds, I can at least propose textual meanings and readings that are plausible for a human, embodied brain. ...

BLOG POST | 1. February 2024

Can a Cognitive Framework for Poetry Inform the Study of Narrative?

In this interview, Michael Lyons asks Emmylou Grosser (Research Fellow for the Department of Hebrew, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein) about how cognitive studies can inform the way we understand ancient Hebrew poetry—and perhaps ancient narrative as well! ...

BLOG POST | 1. January 2024

Cognition, Narrative, and Identity Politics

Countee Cullen, “one of the most representative voices of the Harlem Renaissance,” tells a brief story in his widely read poem, “Incident.” The speaker of the poem was visiting Baltimore as a child. He saw a boy his own age and smiled. The boy, whom we infer to be white, responded with a racist slur. The speaker concludes the poem by explaining that, “Of all the things that happened there ...

BLOG POST | 1. December 2023

Narrative Space and Possible Worlds: Encountering Ancient Narratives from a Cognitive Science Perspective

Since March 2023 I have had the privilege and pleasure to lead with Jan Rüggemeier an exciting collaborative research project on Narrative Space and Possible Worlds: Encountering Ancient Narratives from a Cognitive Science Perspective. The project, funded by the St Andrews-Bonn Collaborative Research Grant Programme, aims to bring together researchers based at the University of St Andrews and the University of Bonn from a variety of disciplines (Classics, Biblical Studies, ...

BLOG POST | 1. November 2023

How do We Recognize and Read Metaphors in Ancient Texts?

How does a scholar reading an ancient text know that a word is being used metaphorically? I don’t think that we have the intuitive luxury in reading an ancient text that we have with our native language. I don’t think we can accurately make intuitive determinations when studying word forms that come to us, so to speak, out of nowhere. Instead we must rely soley on a mechanical procedure which ...

BLOG POST | 1. October 2023

Aristotle’s Metaphor of “Metaphor”

I find Stephan George’s 1914 poem entitled Das Wort (The Word) fascinating because it powerfully illustrates the untranslatable nature of metaphors from one language to another. It is about a traveler who was in the habit of bringing back to his country a wonder or a dream from the places he had been. Upon returning to his land, he would bring what he found to Fate (Norn) who would find ...

BLOG POST | 1. September 2023

Monks & Saints: Blended Viewpoint in the Construction of Selves

Eve Sweetser hosts an interview with Historian LIne Cecile Engh and Cognitive Scientist Mark Turner on their research about how vivid physical metaphors in medieval monastic training manuals helped novices to form "blended selves" that shaped their identity as monks and as persons. ...

BLOG POST | 1. September 2023

Is This the End? A Neurocognitive Approach to End Time Narratives (ETNs)

From ancient to modern times, representations of end time scenarios have not only remained popular, but they have been instrumental in shaping people’s thoughts and actions in many different contexts. But how do End Time Narratives achieve their effects on readers, listeners, or viewers? Melissa Sayyad Bach presupposes that ETNs exercise their immense fascination, and their effects, by triggering certain underlying neurocognitive mechanisms... ...

BLOG POST | 22. June 2023

Peter Stockwell on Cognitive Poetics (part 4)

In this final instalment of an interview with Peter Stockwell, he discusses the biggest obstacles to interpreting ancient texts, how cognitive poetics an help, and the extent to which we can apply matters of modern psychology to the ancient mind. ...

BLOG POST | 15. June 2023

Peter Stockwell on Cognitive Poetics (part 3)

In this third instalment of an interview with Peter Stockwell, he discusses the payoff of using a cognitive approach to literature, and what a cognitive approach “do” for us in relation to other approaches. ...