MENTAL IMAGERY IN THE EXPERIENCE OF LITERARY NARRATIVE VIEWS FROM EMBODIED COGNITION Anežka Kuzmičová Mental Imagery in the Experience of Literary Narrative Views from Embodied Cognition Anežka Kuzmičová © Anežka Kuzmičová, Stockholm University 2013 Cover art © Jiří Trnka – heirs 1962 ISBN 978-91-7447-660-6 Printed in Sweden by US-AB, Stockholm 2013 Distributor: Department of Literature and History of Ideas, Stockholm University we can have mental images without reading, or we can read without experiencing mental images, but imaginal activity as part of reading is common and a matter of degree. (Sadoski and Paivio 2001, 53) dobro máme přijímat a nemluvit o čtení. (Trnka 1962, 59) Contents Chapter 1. Mental imagery and literary narrative: a bird’s-eye view ............ 12 1.1 Mental imagery .......................................................................................................12 1.2 Embodiment ...........................................................................................................16 1.3 Referential bias.......................................................................................................19 1.4 Consciousness .......................................................................................................22 1.5 Rationale ................................................................................................................24 1.6 Mental imagery experiences: the four varieties ......................................................29 1.6.1 Enactment-imagery ........................................................................................31 1.6.2 Description-imagery .......................................................................................32 1.6.3 Speech-imagery .............................................................................................34 1.6.4 Rehearsal-imagery.........................................................................................35 1.6.5 Imagery continuum and in-between experiences...........................................37 1.6.6 The asymmetry between the referential and the verbal .................................40 1.7 Narrative, literariness, and prose............................................................................45 1.8 Referential vs. verbal imagery in the history of reading..........................................52 Chapter 2. Enactment-imagery: presence and bodily movement................ 56 2.1 Presence and bodily movement .............................................................................56 2.2 Bodily movement in real-world experience.............................................................60 2.3 The literary character’s bodily action visualized vs. simulated ...............................62 2.4 Simulation as experience: examples from non-literary motor enactment...............66 2.5 Motor simulation eliciting presence ........................................................................69 2.5.1 Presence as background ...............................................................................69 2.5.2 Presence as (unmarked) balance ..................................................................71 2.5.3 Presence as (marked) occurrence .................................................................81 2.6 Postscript................................................................................................................84 Chapter 3. Description-imagery: reference without experience ................... 88 3.1 Perceptual mimesis ................................................................................................88 3.2 When is visual description? ....................................................................................90 3.3 Why visual description?..........................................................................................95 3.4 Why not perceptual mimesis? ................................................................................97 3.5 What other sort of experience? ............................................................................102 3.6 More on description-imagery and when it arises ..................................................105 3.6.1 Default parameters (finitude)........................................................................106 3.6.2 Other parameters, limitations (feebleness) ..................................................108 3.6.3 The principle of just amount (expectedness) ...............................................117 3.7 Postscript..............................................................................................................120 Chapter 4. The verbal domain: speech-imagery, rehearsal-imagery, and interpretation .............................................................................................. 122 4.1 Verbal imagery .....................................................................................................122 4.2 Embodied qualities ...............................................................................................124 4.2.1 Terminology: VAI, simulation, verbal imagery, inner speech .......................124 4.2.2 The psycho(physio)logy of verbal imagery: some fundamentals .................125 4.2.3 Speech-imagery vs. rehearsal-imagery .......................................................127 4.2.4 Situated speech vs. non-situated language: verbal imagery cues in text ....131 4.2.5 The dynamics of speech-imagery and rehearsal-imagery ...........................137 4.3 Conceptual qualities .............................................................................................141 4.3.1 Terminology: meaning-making, implication, interpretation...........................141 4.3.2 Speech-imagery vs. rehearsal-imagery: implications for vs. against interpretation .........................................................................................................144 4.3.3 Speech and rehearsal: The dual scope of the poetic...................................151 4.4 Postscript..............................................................................................................154 Bibliography ............................................................................................... 157 Index .......................................................................................................... 170 Acknowledgements I wish to thank my first advisor Göran Rossholm, who has been a dear friend not only to this dissertation, but also to me personally and my family. Göran’s constant attention, curiosity and acumen were a treat that sustained me from beginning to end, and they will continue to do so for the future. The work on this dissertation might never have begun were it not for the encouragement I received many years prior from Sara Danius, my second advisor. I much appreciated the support, intellectual as well as material, of the Re- search School of Aesthetics, Stockholm University, and of my fellow gradu- ates. My home department, the Department of Literature and History of Ideas, did everything to make my studies and peregrinations easier. Special thanks go to Hannah Hinz, colleague and friend, who graciously helped me navigate a rough patch. If the four chapters of this dissertation vary in style and approach, it is because they were initially written as a series of five articles that only gradu- ally grew into a system. I am indebted to the venues where these articles are published or forthcoming, and to their editors and reviewers for helpful ad- vice. The individual publications are acknowledged at the beginning of each chapter. Over the years, parts of this dissertation were presented at conferences and other events in Amsterdam, Leuven, Montreal, Örebro, Oslo, Oxford, Prague, St. Louis, and Stockholm. The audiences gave me useful feedback. Greger Andersson carefully read the entire manuscript and helped me avoid several pitfalls. A conversation with Martin Pokorný resulted in late changes to Chapter 1. In earlier stages, Michael Kimmel and Mikael Pettersson pro- vided comments on Chapter 2. Helena Bodin, Maria Forsberg, Alice Jedličková and Erik van Ooijen commented on Chapter 3. I wish to thank these people, as well as many others who contributed to my work, for their time and intellectual rigor. While working on this project I was fortunate to receive scholarships from Nordplus, the Karl and Betty Warburg Fund, and the Swedish Founda- tion for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education. The latter, in conjunction with a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to Marisa Bortolussi and Peter Dixon, enabled me to pay a longer visit to the world of empirical cognitive science. I am grateful to the Department of Psychology and the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, University of Alberta, and especially to my hosts and collaborators Marisa and Peter who helped me set up an experi- ment and make my visit truly productive. The history of this dissertation spans five countries and two continents. In an embryonic form, some of the ideas first emerged during an M.A. fellow- ship at the University of Oslo, 2007. My Ph.D. fellowship at Stockholm University 2008-2013 made it possible for me to pursue them. Chapter 2 was written in Copenhagen 2009. Most of the preparatory work for Chapter 3 was carried out at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, 2011. The entire Chapter 4 was written at my home university in Stockholm 2012. The intro- ductory Chapter