Toward a Theory of Cognitive Poetics

Reuven Tsur is Professor Emeritus of Hebrew Literature and Cognitive Poetics at Tel Aviv University, and Middle East vice president of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics.

"In one of the founding studies of cognitive literary criticism, Tsur combines earlier theoretical approaches (such as Russian formalism) with methods from cognitive psychology and other fields within cognitive science, resulting in a capacious and suggestive survey of many aspects of literary form in light of their perceived effects on readers." -- Literary Theory and Criticism: An Oxford Guide.

• General Assumptions -- The Nature of Cognitive Poetics; Mental and Vocal Performance in Poetry Reading; Constructing a Stable World; Structure and Perceived Qualities. The Sound Stratum of Poetry -- Rhyme Patterns, Gestalt Theory and Perceptual Forces; Metre and Rhythm; Delivery Style and Listener Response: An Empirical Study; Expressiveness and Musicality of Speech Sounds. The Units-of-Meaning Stratum -- Semantic Representation and Information Processing; Literary Synaesthesia. The World Stratum -- The Representative Anecdote: Human Contingency. Regulative Concepts -- The Versatile Reader: Style as Open Concept; Style as Diagnosis and as Hypothesis: Archetypal Patterns. Poetry of Orientation & Disorientation -- Space Perception and Poetry of Orientation; poetry of Disorientation; The Grotesque as an Aesthetic Mode. Poetry of Altered States of Consciousness -- Poetry and Altered States of Consciousness; Obtrusive Rhythms and Emotive Crescendo; The Divergent Passage and Ecstatic Poetry. Critics and Criticism -- The Implied Critic's Decision Style; The Critic's Mental Dictionary. Cognitive Poetics and Cognitive Linguistics -- Lakoff's Roads Not Taken; Deixis in Literature: What Isn't Cognitive Poetics?; Comparing Approaches to Versification Style in Cyrano de Bergerac; Index.