University of Mississippi eGrove Honors College (Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors Theses Honors College) 2014 Cognitive Poetics and Italian Literary Criticism John Biffle University of Mississippi. Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis Part of the Italian Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Biffle, John, "Cognitive Poetics and Italian Literary Criticism" (2014). Honors Theses. 452. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/452 This Undergraduate Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Honors College (Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College) at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. COGNITIVE POETICS AND ITALIAN LITERARY CRITICISM Comparative investigation and practical applications by John Biffle A thesis submitted to the faculty of The University of Mississippi in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College Oxford January 2013 Approved by Advisor: Dr. Valerio Cappozzo Reader: Dr. Merv Matthew Reader: Dr. Robert Barnard ABSTRACT This thesis explores the possibility of the application of cognitive poetics to Italian literature, with a comparison to four major nineteenth century currents of literary criticism. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the research, the data was obtained from reviewed psychology articles, textbooks regarding both psychological and literary subjects, original sources containing the examined poetry and prose, e-books, and open source web material for literary works that lacked copyright. Unless specified, all translations from Italian to English were done by me. Since cognitive poetics are based on the assumption that we perceive literature similarly to how we perceive reality and that no other information outside the text is needed, the method proved to be highly applicable to any examined literary work, regardless of the author or period in which it was composed.