Presence in the reading of literary narrative: A case for motor enactment

Does it Matter Where You Read? Situating Narrative in Physical Environment

“…In a narrative so complex as Heart of Darkness, relatively little is at stake if the reader fails to form a mental image of the Congo River specifically, although such an image certainly contributes to narrative presence (Kuzmičová, 2012), adding to the overall intensity and ideational impact (Green & Brock, 2000) of the reading experience. Yet in other narratives, environmentally propped mental imagery can make a more significant difference.…”

Audiobooks and Print Narrative: Similarities in Text Experience

“…The metaphor presupposes that the imager's embodied stance vis-à-vis the imaged contents is one of a detached spectator, with little or no vicarious involvement in the contents themselves. While readers' mental images, especially those prompted by elaborate static descriptions, may occasionally be experienced as resembling detached pictures in the head, there is substantial evidence that mental imagery is not picturesque but largely enactive instead (Kuzmičová 2012). ⁴ Enactive mental images cast us in three-dimensional situations rather than consisting of two-dimensional visual projections.…”

Embodiment at the Crossroads:some Open Questions between Literary Interpretation and Cognitive Science

“…This at least is the premise of a strand within today's cognitive literary studies, one that draws on embodied and situated -"second-generation" in George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's 1. See, e.g., Caracciolo forthcoming; Esrock 2004;Kuzmičová 2012;Miall 2011;Wojciehowski and Gallese 2011. 2. On the phenomenological antecedents of embodied cognition, including Merleau-Ponty, see Gallagher and Zahavi 2008. ing, since it invites us to consider research questions that have not yet been fully explored in the interdisciplinary cognitive-literary approach.…”