The influence of anxiety: poetry as a theory of mind
Abstract
Cognitive researchers are increasingly turning to an examination of the role nonrational elements, like sensations and emotions, play in cognitive processing. Unlike normal language use, poetic language does not simply represent emotions and sensations, it evokes them. Understanding how it does so contributes to understanding the cognitive workings of the mind. Since schemata operate at the intersection of the nonrational preconscious and conscious awareness, a theoretical model that explains how the interrelations of conceptual and emotion schemata in poetry both motivate and convey emotional-sensory feelings can shed light on how those feelings participate in cognition. To show how such a theoretical model works, I conclude with an analysis of a poem by Wallace Stevens, “Domination of Black.”
Downloads
References
Bloom H. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry / Bloom Н. – New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.
Bloom H. Wallace Stevens: The Poems of Our Climate / Bloom H. – Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1977.
Burke M. Literary Reading, Cognition and Emotion: An Exploration of the Oceanic Mind / Burke M. – London and New York: Routledge, 2011.
Burnett W. America’s 93 Greatest Living Authors Present This Is My Best – Over 150 Self-Chosen and Complete Masterpieces, Together with Their Reasons for Their Selections / Burnett W. – New York: The Dial Press, 1942.
Claassen E. Author Representations in Literary Reading / Claassen E. – Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2012.
Cook E. Poetry, Word-Play, and Word-War in Wallace Stevens / Cook E. – Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.
Damasio A. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness / Damasio A. – New York: Harcourt, 1999.
Damasio A. Feeling our emotions / A. Damasio // Scientific American. – 2005. – March 24. [Электронный ресурс]. – Режим доступа: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=feeling-our-emotions.
Damasio A.Subcortical and Cortical Brain Activity during the Feeling of Selfgenerated Emotions / A. Damasio, T. Grabowski, A. Bechera, H. Damasio, L. Ponto, J. Parvizi, R. Hichwa // Nat Neurosci. – 2000. – Oct; No. 3.10. – P. 1049–1056.
Fox E. Allocation of Visual Attention and Anxiety / E. Fox // Cognition and Emotion. – 1993. – No. 7.2. – P. 207–215.
Freeman D. “Catch[ing] the Nearest Way”: Macbeth and Cognitive Metaphor / D. Freeman // Journal of Pragmatics. – 1995. – No. 24. – P. 689–708.
Freeman M. Minding: Feeling, form, and meaning in the creation of poetic iconicity / M. Freeman // Cognitive Poetics: Goals, Gains, and Gaps: [ed. by G. Brône and J.Vandaele]. – Berlin, 2009. – P. 169–196.
Freeman M. The Aesthetics of Human Experience: Minding, Metaphor, and Icon in Poetic Expression / M. Freeman // Poetics Today: Special Issue on Exchange Values: Poetics and Cognitive Science: [ed. by Mark Bruhn]. – 2011. – No. 32.4. – P. 717–752.
Frühholz S. Dynamical Interactions of Attention and Emotion: A Cognitive Neuroscience Approach through Neural Network Connectivity / S. Frühholz, D. Grandjean // Masmoudi. – 2012.
Jacobs G. 2009 Color Vision: How Our Eyes Reflect Primate Evolution / G. Jacobs, J. Nathans // Scientific American. – 2009. – March 16 [Электронный ресурс]. – Режим доступа: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=evolution-of-primate-color-vision.
Johnson M. The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason / Johnson M. – Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Kövesces Z. Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling / Kövesces Z. – Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Langer S. Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art / Langer S. – New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1953.
Langer S. Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling / Langer S. – Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1967.
LeDoux J. The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life / LeDoux J. – New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.
Maalej Z. The Embodiment of Fear Expressions in Tunisian Arabic / Maalej Z. // Applied Cultural Linguistics: Implications for Second Language Learning and Intercultural Communication: [ed. by F. Shairfan and G. Palmer]. – Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007. – P. 87–104.
Masmoudi S. Attention, Representation, and Human Performance: Integration of Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation / S. Masmoudi, D. Yun Dai, A. Naceur. – New York and London: Psychology Press, 2012.
Miall D. Literary Reading: Empirical and Theoretical Studies / Miall D. – New York: Peter Lang, 2006.
Ortony A. The Cognitive Structure of Emotions / A. Ortony, G. Clore, A. Collins. – Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Pagán Cánovas C. Erotic Emissions in Greek Poetry: A Generic Integration Network / Pagán Cánovas C. // Cognitive Semiotics. – 2010. – No. 6. – P. 7–32.
Rice C. Fictive Motion and Perspectival Construal in the Lyric / Rice C. // Cognitive Literary Studies: Current Themes and New Directions: [ed. by I. Jaén-Portillo and J. Simon]. – Austin, 2012. – P. 183–198.
Rosen C. The Chopin Touch / C. Rosen // The New York Review of Books. – 1987. [Электронный ресурс] – Режим доступа: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1987/may/28/the-chopin-touch/.
Ross J. R. (Háj). n.d. The Hidden Stanza – and Integering, in Wallace Stevens's “Domination of Black.” Unpublished manuscript.
Stevens W. Domination of Black / W. Stevens // Harmonium. – New York, 1923.
Stevens W. The Irrational Element in Poetry / W. Stevens // Opus Posthumous. – New York, 1957. – P. 216–229.
Stevens W. Letters of Wallace Stevens: [ed. by Holly Stevens]. – Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
Talmy L. Toward a Cognitive Semantics. Volume 1: Concept Structuring Systems / Talmy L. – Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2000.
Tsur R. Toward a Theory of Cognitive Poetics. Second, expanded and updated edition / Tsur R. – Sussex Academic Press: Brighton and Portland, 2008.
van Peer W. Scientific Methods for the Humanities / W. van Peer, F. Hakemulder, S. Zyngier. – Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2012.
Authors, who publish with this journal, accept the following conditions:
The authors reserve the copyright of their work and transfer to the magazine the right of the first publication of this work under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Non-Derivs License (CC BY-NC-ND), which allows other persons to freely distribute a published work with mandatory reference to the authors of the original work and the first publication of the work in this journal.
Authors have the right to enter into separate additional agreements for the non-exclusive dissemination of the work in the form in which it was published by this journal (for example, to post the work in the electronic institutions' repository or to publish as part of a monograph), provided that the link to the first publication of the work in this journal is given.
The journal policy allows and encourages the authors to place the manuscripts on the Internet (for example, in the institutions' repositories or on personal websites), both before the presentation of this manuscript to the editorial board and during review procedure, as it contributes to the creation of productive scientific discussion and positively affects the efficiency and dynamics of citing the published work (see The Effect of Open Access).
