This volume offers a state-of-the-art collection of studies in the rapidly growing interdisciplinary field of cognitive poetics. In coupling cognitive linguistics and poetics, cognitive poeticians aim to offer cognitive readings of literary texts. By bringing together key players and critics in a setting of interdisciplinary dialogue, this volume captures the goals, gains and gaps of this emerging field.

From the contents:

Cognitive poetics. A critical introduction: Jeroen Vandaele and Geert Brône - Text worlds: Elena Semino - The way in which text worlds are furnished: response to Elena Semino’s “Text Worlds”: Shweta Narayan - Cognitive approaches to narrative analysis: David Herman - Situating cognitive approaches to narrative analysis (commentary to Herman): Peter Stockwell - Reflections on a cognitive stylistic approach to characterization: Jonathan Culpeper - Comments on Culpeper: Uri Margolin - Minding. feeling, form, and meaning in the creation of poetic iconicity: Margaret H. Freeman - From linguistic form to conceptual structure in five steps. Analyzing metaphor in poetry: Gerard Steen - Common foundations of metaphor and iconicity (commentary to Freeman and Steen): Ming-Yu Tseng - Metaphor and figure-ground relationship. Comparisons from poetry, music, and the visual arts: Reuven Tsur - Hiding in plain sight. Figure-ground reversals in humour (commentary to Tsur): Tony Veale - Deconstructing verbal humour with Construction Grammar: Eleni Antonopoulou and Kiki Nikiforidou - A commentary on Antonopoulou and Nikiforidou: Salvatore Attardo - Judging distances. Mental spaces, distance, and viewpoint in literary discourse: Barbara Dancygier and Lieven Vandelanotte - The event that built a distanced space (commentary to Dancygier and Vandelanotte): Jeroen Vandaele - Discourse, context, and cognition (rebuttal to Vandaele): Barbara Dancygier and Lieven Vandelanotte - Does an “ironic situation” favor an ironic interpretation?: Rachel Giora, Ofer Fein, Ronie Kaufman, Dana Eisenberg, and Shani Erez - Commentary on ‘Does an ironic situation favour an ironic interpretation?’: Albert Katz - A reply to Albert Katz’s commentary: Rachel Giora, Ofer Fein, Ronie Kaufman, Dana Eisenberg, and Shani Erez - Commentary on Giora et al. – from a philosophical viewpoint: Edmond Wright - A reply to Edmond Wright’s commentary: Rachel Giora, Ofer Fein, Ronie Kaufman, Dana Eisenberg, and Shani Erez - How cognitive is cognitive poetics? Adding a symbolic approach to the embodied one: Max Louwerse and Willie Van Peer - Incorporated but not embodied? (commentary to Louwerse and Van Peer): Dirk Geeraerts - Incorporated means symbolic and embodied (rebuttal to Geeraerts): Max Louwerse and Willie Van Peer - Epilogue. How (not) to advance toward the narrative mind: Meir Sternberg