EL MICRORRELATO: FLASH FICTION and the NEUROHUMANITIES by R
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EL MICRORRELATO: FLASH FICTION AND THE NEUROHUMANITIES by R. Tyler Gabbard-Rocha A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Purdue University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Languages and Cultures West Lafayette, Indiana August 2020 THE PURDUE UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL STATEMENT OF COMMITTEE APPROVAL Dr. Patricia Hart, Co-Chair School of Languages and Cultures Dr. Paula Leverage, Co-Chair School of Languages and Cultures Dr. Cara Kinnally School of Languages and Cultures Dr. Howard Mancing School of Languages and Cultures Approved by: Dr. Jennifer William 2 Para Ignacio. Caminando despreocupados por Malasaña, vimos en un escaparate el siguiente verso breve que tanto nos ha inspirado durante estos años: “Algún día diré Que no fue fácil, pero lo logré.” Una vez más, debido principalmente a tu ánimo constante, digo “lo logré.” 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have unending gratitude for the invaluable support, guidance, feedback, and encouragement of my dissertation committee, in no particular order: Dr. Patricia Hart, Dr. Paula Leverage, Dr. Cara Kinnally, and Dr. Howard Mancing. Everyone’s individual and collective input has inspired this project from the beginning and paved a clear path forward for future developments. I cannot thank them enough for extensive bibliographies, many re-reads, assistance in my data collection, life-changing phone conversations, opportunity after opportunity to improve personally and professionally, and so much more. I am also particularly thankful for the countless conversations (personal and academic) with everyone else who participated in the Center for Neurohumanities at Purdue, again in no particular order: Dr. Jen William for demonstrating how a viewer could empathize with a villain in film; Dr. Clotilde Landais, for stimulating discussions of fear, horror, and suspense in fiction; Dr. Rich Schweickert, for encouraging me to dream; and fellow doctoral student Jason Wright, for innumerable conversations about memes, embodied cognition, graphic novels, and the unforgiving illusion of time. I would also like to thank Dr. Ángeles Encinar of Saint Louis University in Madrid, who taught my very first class as a graduate student in Spanish: a class on the microrrelato. I was very resistant to the microrrelatos, feeling like I simply could not “get” them, but her patience and dedication to teaching excellence quickly opened my mind to what is now my favorite literature to read. Finally, none of this would have been possible without the constant support of my family: my mother Marsha, my father Rob, my brother Dylan, and my aunt Amy, who have helped me 4 succeed during the last twelve years of higher education more than I could ever express in words, and for which I am forever grateful. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... 8 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 9 WHAT IS A MICRORRELATO? ....................................................................... 20 2.1 INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 20 2.2 WHAT IS A MICRORRELATO? ................................................................................. 22 2.2.1 Nomenclature .......................................................................................................... 22 2.2.2 Radial Definition ..................................................................................................... 25 2.2.3 Radial characterization of the microrrelato ............................................................ 27 2.3 “Minidecalogues” and Other Characteristics ................................................................. 31 2.3.1 Fractality and fragmentation ................................................................................... 34 2.3.2 The Title .................................................................................................................. 36 2.3.3 The End ................................................................................................................... 38 2.3.4 Intertextuality .......................................................................................................... 39 2.3.5 Imagination .............................................................................................................. 40 2.4 Interaction with Other Genres: What a Microrrelato Is Not .......................................... 43 2.5 Concision, Fictionality, and Narrativity Revisited ......................................................... 49 2.5.1 Narrativity ............................................................................................................... 50 2.5.2 Brevity or Concision ............................................................................................... 53 2.5.3 Fictionality............................................................................................................... 58 2.6 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 66 NEUROHUMANITIES AND THE MICRORRELATO .................................... 69 3.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 69 3.2 The Mind-Body in its Context ........................................................................................ 74 3.3 Cognition and the Microrrelato ...................................................................................... 88 3.3.1 Conceptual Metaphor .............................................................................................. 88 3.3.2 Conceptual Blending ............................................................................................... 92 3.3.3 Transportation, Immersion, and Imagination .......................................................... 94 3.3.4 Believing and Disbelieving ..................................................................................... 97 3.4 Contextualizing Cognition and Microrrelatos in Space and Time .............................. 100 6 3.5 Conclusion: A Note on Neurodiversity ........................................................................ 101 CONTEXTUALIZING THE MICRORRELATO IN THE 21ST CENTURY ... 104 4.1 Towards Brevity in the 21st Century ............................................................................ 104 4.2 Time for Reading in the 21st Century ........................................................................... 111 4.3 Conclusion: The internet as the microrrelato’s new home .......................................... 125 EMPIRICAL RESEARCH ............................................................................... 127 5.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 127 5.2 Theoretical Framework: Fiction on the Mind .............................................................. 128 5.3 Introduction to Hispanic Literature: Research Questions ............................................ 132 5.3.1 Methodology ......................................................................................................... 133 5.3.2 Parameters ............................................................................................................. 135 5.3.3 Results ................................................................................................................... 138 5.3.4 Discussion ............................................................................................................. 139 5.4 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 142 CONCLUSION: THE COMTEXERE OF THE MICRORRELATO ................. 143 References ................................................................................................................................... 148 Appendix A. RESULTS FROM DATA COLLECTION ........................................................... 155 Table 1. Instances of Levels of Embedded Mental States ................................................. 155 Table 2. Comparison of Highest levels of Embedment..................................................... 155 Table 3. Conjectures per phrase. ....................................................................................... 156 Table 4. Comparisons per phrase. ..................................................................................... 156 Table 5. Instances of Metacognitive Vocabulary .............................................................. 156 Table 6. Instances of 1st Person Metacognitive Vocabulary ............................................. 157 Table 7. Comparison of the Frequency of Most common Words ..................................... 158 APPENDIX B. Decálogo del perfecto cuentista......................................................................... 159 7 ABSTRACT This dissertation defends the microrrelato, an extremely brief work of narrative fiction, as the “fourth narrative genre,” as informed by research in embodied cognitive science, often referred to as the field of “neurohumanities.” The hallmark brevity of the microrrelato means that the literary perception of the text—and the creation of an imagined