59 Vol. 3, Issue 1, 2016 Theories – Research – Applications Cognitive Poetry: Theoretical Framework for the Application of Cogni- tive Psychology Techniques to Poetic Text Anatoliy V. Kharkhurin American University of Sharjah, UAE E-mail address:
[email protected] ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: This article presents a theoretical framework for the author’s experimental work in contemporary poetry, which has re- Poetry ceived the term cognitive poetry. In contrast to cognitive po- Cognitive etics, which applies the principles of cognitive psychology Psychology to interpret poetic texts, cognitive poetry applies these princi- Metaphor ples to produce poetic texts. The theoretical considerations Vygotsky of cognitive poetry are based on the assumption that one of the major purposes of creative work is to elicit an aesthet- ical reaction in the beholder. The aesthetical reaction to po- etic texts could be achieved via their satiation with multiple meanings presented through multiple sensory modalities. Article history: Cognitive poetry employs techniques developed in cognitive Received 12 January 2016 psychology to explicitly address cognitive processes underly- Received in revised form 14 April 2016 ing the construction of multiple conceptual planes. The fol- Accepted 15 April 2016 lowing techniques are discussed: priming, the Stroop effect, multimodal and multilingual presentations. The applications ISSN: 2354-0036 of these techniques are illustrated with examples of poetic DOI: 10.1515/ctra-2016-0005 texts produced by the author. Over the last hundred years, poetry has undergone major changes, which reflect varia- tions in cultural, social, ideological, political and economical landscapes. These modifica- tions manifest themselves primarily in conceptual and stylistic aspects of poetic text.