Cognitive poetics

Erik Redling

pp. 248-252

in: Martin Middeke, Timo Müller, Christina Wald, Hubert Zapf (eds), English and American studies, Stuttgart, Metzler, 2012

Abstract

Cognitive poetics is a relatively new and still emerging discipline in the field of literary studies and involves the critical practice of understanding and analyzing literary texts in terms of cognitive linguistics and psychology. The phrase itself was introduced by Reuven Tsur to denote a cognition-based approach to poetry and its perception, but recently it has been used in a much wider sense, referring to "any approaches to literary craft that take models from cognitive science as their descriptive frameworks' (Stockwell 8). According to Peter Stockwell, practitioners of cognitive poetics do not merely use literary texts as data to illustrate insights made in cognitive linguistics and psychology (6). Rather, they take the cognitive turn seriously and aim to answer some of the central questions of literary studies by engaging in "a thorough re-evaluation of all of the categories with which we understand literary reading and analysis' (7).