Embodying literature (original) (raw)
Related papers
Kuzmičová, A. (2012): Presence in the reading of literary narrative: A case for motor enactment
Semiotica, 2012
Drawing on research in narrative theory and literary aesthetics, text and discourse processing, phenomenology and the experimental cognitive sciences, this paper outlines an embodied theory of presence (i.e., the reader's sense of having entered a tangible environment) in the reading of literary narrative. Contrary to common assumptions, it is argued that there is no straightforward relation between the degree of detail in spatial description on one hand, and the vividness of spatial imagery and presence on the other. It is also argued that presence arises from a first-person, enactive process of sensorimotor simulation/resonance, rather than from mere visualizing from the perspective of a passive, third-person observer. In sections 1 to 3, an inter-theoretical argument is presented, proposing that presence may be effectively cued by explicit (or strongly implied) references to object-directed bodily movement. In section 4, an attempt is made at explaining which ways of embedding such references in the narrative may be particularly productive at eliciting presence.
Textual sources of Embodied Literary Reading
Literary works can be analyzed from the viewpoint of how frequently, how systematically, and at what level they engage the reader in somatic activation and imagery. Researchers need to (a) identify text cues that (co-)produce embodied effects and (b) evaluate their distinct somatization profiles. This paper surveys embodied simulation, a scene-bound effect lending itself to a textual approach most straightforwardly. After charting the wider terrain of literary somatization I shall single out two broad categories of cues for scene-bound effects (whereas global effects like suspense and “emergent” reader specific effects like dissatisfaction tend to elude linguistic analysis, so I won’t have much to say about them): My first focus addresses canonical imagery, which, by and large, subserves the functions of “being there” and character empathy. It spans descriptions of objects, persons, actions, and interactions in the storyworld, but also inner experience, i.e. pain, proprioception, and visceral affect. Under a second – in fact overlapping – heading, figurative language deserves attention. It comprises force-dynamic metaphors that cue our understanding of the causality of affect, psychodynamics, and protagonist interaction. Metaphors that augment already established simulative imagery by gestalt effects (double-projection, etc.) add to this. My overall aim is to pinpoint analytic hot spots by discussing the cue-effect relationship of some thirty linguistic devices with a view to case-studies and comparative analyses of “engagement profiles” of texts.
Toward an Embodied Theory of Understanding Literary Text
Folia linguistica et litteraria, 2024
In this article, I aim to theorize and formulate the understanding of literary text within an Embodied Cognitive Approach. After sketching out the analyses of literary text understanding conducted within the framework of the so-called Common Cognitive Approach, I will proceed to point out their shortcomings. I will then lay the scientific foundations of the Embodied Theory of Understanding Literary Text (ETULT) by referring to direct and indirect evidence from neurology, psychology and so on. I will introduce ETULT in detail, with the help of a fictional piece of evidence, Dante's Divine Comedy. I will also delineate the outlines of some field studies for the future, through developing questionnaires and brain scans (fMIR and EEG). In short, ETULT asserts that understanding literary texts is an embodied act, occurring processually on two levels of representation: Schematic and Embodied (The Two-Layered Representation Hypothesis or TLRH). Upon encountering a literary text, the reader forms a Blended Mediated World which is a fusion of the Text World and the Readerly World (The Blended Mediated World Hypothesis or BMWH). Within this mixed world, while those projected parts from the Text World which correspond with sensorimotor experiences of the reader are understood in an embodied way, the parts that lack embodied equivalence in the reader's sensorimotor experience function as Perceian Representamens, setting the reader in search of relevant Objects of Signs, which occur in the form of sensorimotor experiences (The Object-Search Hypothesis or OSH). The reader then becomes involved in a cycle of coming and going movements between the literary text and the socio-physical environment, demonstrating thus the processual nature of embodied understanding.
Mental Simulation during Literary Reading
Handbook of Empirical Literary Studies, 2021
Readers experience a number of sensations during reading. They do notor do not onlyprocess words and sentences in a detached, abstract manner. Instead they "perceive" what they read about. They see descriptions of scenery, feel what characters feel, and hear the sounds in a story. These sensations tend to be grouped under the umbrella terms "mental simulation" and "mental imagery." This chapter provides an overview of empirical research on the role of mental simulation during literary reading. Our chapter also discusses what mental simulation is and how it relates to mental imagery. Moreover, it explores how mental simulation plays a role in leading models of literary reading and investigates under what circumstances mental simulation occurs during literature reading. Finally, the effect of mental simulation on the literary reader's experience is discussed, and suggestions and unresolved issues in this field are formulated.
Picturing Fiction through Embodied Cognition
2022
This concise volume addresses the question of whether or not language, and its structure in literary discourses, determines individuals' mental "vision," employing an innovative cross-disciplinary approach using readers' drawings of their mental imagery during reading. The book engages in critical dialogue with the perceived wisdom in stylistics rooted in Roger Fowler's seminal work on deixis and point of view to test whether or not this theory can fully account for what readers see in their mind's eye and how they see it. The work draws on findings from a study of English and Dutch across a range of literary texts, in which participants read literary text fragments and were then asked to immediately draw representations of what they had seen envisioned. Building on the work of Fowler and more recent theoretical and empirical languagebased studies in the area, Klomberg, Schilhab, and Burke argue that models from embodied cognitive science can help account for anomalies in evidence from readers' drawings, indicating new ways forward for interdisciplinary understandings of individual meaning construction in literary textual interfaces. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in stylistics, cognitive psychology, rhetoric, and philosophy, particularly those working in the field of embodied cognition.
Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2016
Reading fiction is a silent activity, where readers come to know imaginary worlds and characters from the book's pages. However, we perceive the natural world with more than our eyes, and literature should be no different. Thus, an embodied reading experience is proposed, adding sound effects and haptic feedback to allow readers to listen and feel the narrative text. This paper presents a preliminary prototype for multisensory narratives and an experimental methodology to measure embodiment in literature. Results for the subjective assessment of immersion and user experience from 15 participants in three modalities: haptic, sound, both combined are discussed.
Cognitive Philology, 2008
Major theorical studies approached the crucial subject of mimesis focusing on the relationship between literature and reality, maintaining that novels imitate reality through language, translate facts and events into semiotic acts or they establish consistent fictional worlds intersecting the so called actual or ‘real’ one. The present account maintains a different point of view, introducing an ecological theory of narrative reference. According with Gibson’s Theory of Affordances and recent findings in the field of neuroscience, namely mirror neurons, stories, and novels in particular, are addressed as being understood on the basis of individual action-related knowledge. Samples from the european tradition of medieval and early modern knightly novels are provided so as to show how novels do textually encode actions and how narrative events just referring to sensory experiences and interoceptive responses as emotions, feelings, thoughts, deductions or decisions are tightly connected, and to some extent dependent on action-related ones. Finally, a new assessment of novels as ecological niches will be taken into account, aside implications of an ecological theory of narrative reference for philological investigation of novels in the general framework of comparative literatures.
Mental simulation during literary reading: Individual differences revealed with eye-tracking
Language, Cognition and Neuroscience
People engage in simulation when reading literary narratives. In this study, we tried to pinpoint how different kinds of simulation (perceptual and motor simulation, mentalising) affect reading behaviour. Eye-tracking (gaze durations, regression probability) and questionnaire data were collected from 102 participants, who read three literary short stories. In a pre-test, 90 additional participants indicated which parts of the stories were high in one of the three kinds of simulation-eliciting content. The results show that motor simulation reduces gaze duration (faster reading), whereas perceptual simulation and mentalising increase gaze duration (slower reading). Individual differences in the effect of simulation on gaze duration were found, which were related to individual differences in aspects of story world absorption and story appreciation. These findings suggest fundamental differences between different kinds of simulation and confirm the role of simulation in absorption and appreciation.
Representation and Immersion. The Embodied Meaning of Literature
Gestalt Theory, 2019
This article is an attempt to link together the notions of representation and immersion within an interdisciplinary framework combining neuroscience, literary studies, and philosophy. What is representation? Can we define its mode of existence and describe its natural habitat? Does it live on the page of a novel, in the brain's circumvolutions, or in-between? Is it possible to intensify our experience of representation through immersive reading? How can we reach such immersive altered state of consciousness? What are its ethical and ecological implications? These are the questions we will be addressing in the following pages, in which we will first explore the neurophysiological conditions of immersive embodied reading, before considering its opposition to the productive, in-control cognitive styles promoted by our rationalist modernity.
Embodied Cognition, Kinaesthetic Knowledge, and Kinesic Imagination in Literature and Visual Arts
Frontiers in Communication, 2022
Embodied cognition, kinaesthetic knowledge, and kinesic imagination are central not only to acts of creation but also to the reception of artworks. This article substantiates this claim by focusing on sensorimotricity in art and literature, presenting two sets of analytical distinctions that pertain to dynamics in gesture and movement. The first set of distinctions (kinesis, kinaesthesia, kinetics, and kinematics) and the second set (timing, tempo, and momentum) are used to analyse literary descriptions and visual depictions of movements. The first set of distinctions is discussed in the first part of the article in relation to medieval drawings and literary excerpts from different historical periods (in works by Ovid, Shakespeare, and Proust). The second part focuses on visual arts and leads to an analysis of Bruegel's Fall of the Rebel Angels, while the third part presents a kinesic analysis of the Apollo and Daphne episode in Ovid's Metamorphoses. A heightened attention to the cognitive processing of kinesic features in acts of reception enhances the role and responsibility of readers and viewers in the ways in which they grasp the movement-based meanings formalized by artists of various cultures and historical periods.