Towards an Eco-inspired poetics of minimalist narrative

Tento text je výsledkem setkání dvou témat, dvou otázek: a: Co je to minimalistický narativ? b: Jaké metodologické možnosti skýtají literárněsémiotické teorie Umberta Eca? Obě je třeba alespoň stručně zdůvodnit a upřesnit. Ad a: Pojem "minimalismus" je dnes v kruzích zabývajících se literaturou nadužíván, a ztrácí tak svůj smysl. Neexistuje pro něj definice. Názory na to, co všechno ještě je a co už není "minimalistické" vyprávění, se rozcházejí. Dokonce spolu ani nekomunikují. Nestřetávají se. Řečeno přesněji tedy "minimalismus" v běžném úzu není pojmem, nýbrž nadmíru nepřesným lidovým výrazem, po němž ti, kdo píší o literatuře, sahají v okamžiku slovní nouze. Za "minimalistický" dnes bývá označován kdejaký román - u žánru románu zůstaneme pro přehlednost až dokonce, neboť mi nejde o "minimalistický tvar" či "rozsah", nýbrž o "minimalistický narativ" -, který je nějak "redukován". V jakém ohledu a ve srovnání s čím je redukován, už většinou nikdo nevysvětluje. Následující stránky představují pokus učinit z výrazu pojem. Nebude mě zajímat, proč je narativ, který osobně považuji za minimalistický - román L'appareil-photo (1988) Jeana-Philippa Toussainta -, napsán zrovna tak, jak je napsán. Přesto budu ve svém čtení brát trvalý zřetel na literární historii. Bude mě zajímat, jak je napsán. Bude mě zajímat,...What is a minimalist narrative, and what are its characteristic features? How do you identify one? For many critics, minimalist writing is a strictly historical notion - even though they at the same time, like John Barth does in his famous apologetics "A Few Words About Minimalism", paradoxically enough stress its ubiquitous nature throughout literature of all times. By narrative minimalism the American critic generally means the austere style of the novels and short stories of Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel, Mary Robison, Joan Didion, Ann Beattie. An American literary current of the 1970s mainly, devoted merely to the quotidian, descriptive, often reduced to what can be perceived from the outside of a human character. Thereby: the "dirty realism" or "K-mart realism". These derogatory labels tell us that the literary reviewer and critic of today still formulates his terms and judgments out of a hierarchically ordered, traditional presupposition of what a narrative text is and should be, working with a virtual model of balance between "form" and "content". Translated into the language of classical narratology: story discourse.Ústav české literatury a komparatistikyDepartment of Czech and Comparative LiteratureFaculty of ArtsFilozofická fakult

Different fiction genres take children’s memories to different places

Fiction, more than expository text, nurtures intimate connections between text and the reader’s life experiences. This dimension of reader response is underexplored in relation to children. Adapting methods from Empirical Literary Studies to educational research objectives, we employed the concept of “remindings,” i.e. reminiscing prompted by text, in studying children’s life-resonant responses to self-selected leisure books. Six workshops were run in primary classrooms during which participants (N = 148; age 8–11) engaged in remindings and mental imagery. Written remindings were then analysed for systematic variation across fiction book genres (Real-world vs. Fantasy; Relationships vs. Adventure). We found that Real-World Adventure books prompted remindings of discrete life events, while Real-World Relationships books prompted remindings of more diffuse experiences. Fantasy Adventure books were the least likely to prompt remindings. Further genre-based differences emerged in the distribution of themes within remindings. We consider the consequences of these insights for supporting young readers

The place of the cognitive in literary studies

Non peer reviewe

Eye movements and mental imagery during reading of literary texts with different narrative styles

Based on Kuzmicova's (2014) phenomenological typology of narrative styles, we studied the specific contributions of mental imagery to literary reading experience and to reading behavior by combining questionnaires with eye-tracking methodology. Specifically, we focused on the two main categories in Kuzmicova's (2014) typology, i.e., texts dominated by an "enactive" style, and texts dominated by a "descriptive" style. "Enactive" style texts render characters interacting with their environment, and "descriptive" style texts render environments dissociated from human action. The quantitative analyses of word category distributions of two dominantly enactive and two dominantly descriptive texts indicated significant differences especially in the number of verbs, with more verbs in enactment compared to descriptive texts. In a second study, participants read two texts (one theoretically cueing descriptive imagery, the other cueing enactment imagery) while their eye movements were recorded. After reading, participants completed questionnaires assessing aspects of the reading experience generally, as well as their text-elicited mental imagery specifically. Results show that readers experienced more difficulties conjuring up mental images during reading descriptive style texts and that longer fixation duration on words were associated with enactive style text. We propose that enactive style involves more imagery processes which can be reflected in eye movement behavior

Towards an Eco-inspired poetics of minimalist narrative

What is a minimalist narrative, and what are its characteristic features? How do you identify one? For many critics, minimalist writing is a strictly historical notion - even though they at the same time, like John Barth does in his famous apologetics "A Few Words About Minimalism", paradoxically enough stress its ubiquitous nature throughout literature of all times. By narrative minimalism the American critic generally means the austere style of the novels and short stories of Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel, Mary Robison, Joan Didion, Ann Beattie. An American literary current of the 1970s mainly, devoted merely to the quotidian, descriptive, often reduced to what can be perceived from the outside of a human character. Thereby: the "dirty realism" or "K-mart realism". These derogatory labels tell us that the literary reviewer and critic of today still formulates his terms and judgments out of a hierarchically ordered, traditional presupposition of what a narrative text is and should be, working with a virtual model of balance between "form" and "content". Translated into the language of classical narratology: story discourse

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

Drawing on research in narrative theory and literary aesthetics, text and discourse processing, phenomenology and the experimental cognitive sciences, this paper outlines an embodied theory of presence in the reading of literary narrative. Contrary to common assumptions, it is argued that there is no straightforward relation between the degree of detail in spatial description on one hand, and the vividness of spatial imagery and presence on the other. It is also argued that presence arises from a first-person, enactive process of sensorimotor simulation/ resonance, rather than from mere visualizing from the perspective of a passive, third-person observer. In sections 1 to 3, an inter-theoretical argument is presented, proposing that presence may be effectively cued by explicit references to object -directed bodily movement. In section 4, an attempt is made at explaining which ways of embedding such references in the narrative may be particularly productive at eliciting presence