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.
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…
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.
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.
Peter Stockwell on Cognitive Poetics (part 2)
In this second instalment of the interview with Peter Stockwell, he defines ‘cognitive poetics’ and explains how cognitive science has changed the landscape of inquiry into the study of language and literature.
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.
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.
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 character is as a ‘lens’ through which to look at the characterization of individual figures in literature (and drama, tv, film, etc.).” For the whole discussion, read on!
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).
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.