{"id":2219,"date":"2012-07-25T10:00:34","date_gmt":"2012-07-25T08:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=2219"},"modified":"2012-07-10T09:30:13","modified_gmt":"2012-07-10T07:30:13","slug":"cognitive-poetic-readings-in-elizabeth-bishop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=2219","title":{"rendered":"Cognitive poetic readings in Elizabeth Bishop"},"content":{"rendered":"
Cognitive poetic readings in Elizabeth Bishop<\/strong>: Portrait of a mind thinking. By El\u017cbieta W\u00f3jcik-Leese<\/strong>. (Applications of cognitive linguistics 15.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2010. Pp. viii, 317. ISBN\u00a0 9783110186109<\/a>. $140 (Hb).<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Taras Shmiher<\/a><\/strong>, Ivan Franko National University<\/em><\/p>\n

This book contributes to the hermeneutical study of Elizabeth Bishop\u2019s poetics. The author applies a theoretical framework grounded in cognitive linguistics, which focuses on individual poetic thought and expression. How the poet and the reader conceptualize the cognitive constructs of the human mind in a text is the crucial question explored.<\/p>\n

Part 1 consists of an introduction (3\u201317) and two chapters. Cognitive poetics allows the researcher to trace the course of the mind in the language of Bishop\u2019s poetry, incorporating such basic analytical categories as embodiment, the cognitive unconscious, metaphorical thought, prototypes, and conceptualist semantics. Ch. 1 (18\u201356) covers six dimensions of imaginative apprehension: the researcher chooses one cognitive process (e.g. categorization, image schemas, metaphors, conceptual integration, metonymies, narrative structure) and scrutinizes its applicability, which should be linguistically visible in Bishop\u2019s text. This procedure makes possible the discovery of the poet\u2019s mental processes that formed her linguistic expression. Ch. 2 (57\u201375) contains the readings of Bishop\u2019s three licensing stories while investigating the two most salient cognitive domains of her conceptual universe: vision and travel. The analyst\u2019s objective is to understand the relation between the mappings of these stories, the language of the poems, and the conceptual metaphors of her poetry. A survey of such mappings by critics of Bishop\u2019s writings accompanies the main line of investigation.<\/p>\n

Part 2 contains its own introduction (79\u201392) and eight case studies of cognitive readings of Elizabeth Bishop (93\u2013262). Genetic criticism as the study of textual invention lies at the center of a discussion that presents new insights into the movement of the poet\u2019s mind. Detailed analyses of Bishop\u2019s poems include their drafts, manuscripts, transcripts along with the author\u2019s notes, sketches, journal entries, and letters\u2014everything that can be called her avant-texts. Cognitive poetics contributes to genetic criticism by depicting the mind thinking during the writing process, and the genetic assessment of compositional processes will be beneficial for cognitive research on the construction of meaning. The readings aim to incorporate both large compositional features and microscopic details into a cognitive analysis, unveiling in the framework of conceptualist semantics how a subject\u2019s conceptualization contributes to the construction of meaning. The choice of poems for analysis was grounded on three principles: the availability of multiple versions, representativeness, and the thoroughness of the existing readings.<\/p>\n

The epilogue (265\u201372) draws conclusions about mind reading on the part of the poet, Bishop\u2019s conceptual and linguistic unities, and the movement of her imaginative apprehension. The introspective analysis here offers new prospects for linguistic analysts and literary critics. Three appendices include a chronology of Bishop\u2019s life and activities, the \u2018mind-as-body\u2019 conceptual system (after George Lakoff and Mark Johnson), and \u2018thinker-as-mover\/manipulator\u2019 mapping (after Mark Turner). The bibliography is divided into two parts\u2014the primary sources (three topical groups) and works consulted (six groups)\u2014and the book concludes with an index of names and subjects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cognitive poetic readings in Elizabeth Bishop: Portrait of a mind thinking. By El\u017cbieta W\u00f3jcik-Leese. (Applications of cognitive linguistics 15.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2010. Pp. viii, 317. ISBN\u00a0 9783110186109. $140 (Hb). Reviewed by Taras Shmiher, Ivan Franko National University This book contributes to the hermeneutical study of Elizabeth Bishop\u2019s poetics. The author applies a theoretical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2219"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2220,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2219\/revisions\/2220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}