LITERATURA ŞI NOUA INTERDISCIPLINARITATE: STILISTICA COGNITIVĂ ŞI POETICA COGNITIVĂ
LITERATURE AND NEW INTERDISCIPLINARITY. COGNITIVE STYISTICS AND COGNITIVE POETICS

Summary/Abstract: On the background of cognitive semantics, our analysis employs a restricted but well defined corpus: Peter Stockwell, “Cognitive Poetics. An Introduction” (2002) and Paul Simpson, “Stylistics. A Resource Book for Students” (2004). Both authors define the interdisciplines in a similar manner, by changing the focus from the linguistics of writing towards the mental processes occurring while reading the text: „cognitive poetics is all about reading literature” (Stockwell 2002: 1); „stylistics has lacked a readerly dimension” (Simpson 2004: 38), therefore contemporary stylistics will be interested in the connections between the human mind and the reading process. Simpson says „cognitive stylistics or cognitive poetics” (ibidem: 38), while Stockwell tries to separate, rather unconvincingly, the two disciplines. Equally unconvincing seems Simpson’s claim that literature is better conceptualized as a reading mode and not as writing (ibidem: 39). Verdonk also says and, thus subordinating, in fact, stylistics: „cognitive poetics appears to provide theoretical strategies that allow stylisticians to address the problem that literary discourses are different from other types of social discourses” (2005: 237). The contribution that cognitivism brings to the understanding of the literary text resides in engaging several theories, concepts and models derived from Fauconnier’s hypothesis about „mental spaces”. Hence: the theory of conceptual integration or „blending”; the figure ground organization theory; the theory of ideal/idealized cognitive models; the prototype theory; the schema theory (frame, script, role); cognitive metaphor and cognitive metonymy; emotions, imagination, reference etc. The comeback of stylistics and poetics, due to the contact with experimental sciences, testifies to their capacity of enriching and updating their research methods. It is important to remind that cognitive sciences supplement and do not substitute current analytical models.

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