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, Art History, Classical Archaeology) and various traditions (Christian, Islamic, and Buddhist studies), enabling a cross-disciplinary and trans-cultural exchange of ideas and perspectives.
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 mimics intuition.
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 a word for it in her fount. One time he returned and presented his discovery to Fate, but she could not find a word for it, and consequently, as George expresses it in German, “Worauf es meiner hand entrann / Und nie mein land den schatz gewann,” “Whereupon it escaped my hand / And my country never gained the treasure” (George 1968).
This is the situation with Aristotle’s metaphor of metaphorá.
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.