Chloe Harrison, Louise Nuttall, Peter Stockwell and Wenjuan Yuan (eds.). Cognitive Grammar in Literature

What is it about?

This review examines "cognitive" approaches to literature and engages with the significant benefits and a few pitfalls of a Cognitive Grammar approach. It reviews the contributions of the Harrison et al. edited volume, focusing on fictivity, perception, ambiguity and coherence, and ambience and atmosphere, and offers avenues for future work in literature and culture from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, other cognitive sciences, and literary and cultural studies.

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Why is it important?

The review highlights key contributions of Cognitive Grammar as a fine-grained tool for the study of literature, while charting wider contexts and connections not significantly explored within the volume itself. The review presents an array of "future directions" for developing a more robust cognitive approach to literature and textuality, including features of sociality, multimodality, and multiplicity in construal.