nCOGNITO - Kognitív Kultúraelméleti Közlemények: Értesítések

Call for Papers: Call for papers Vol. 4 No. 2 (2025) – Trauma Literature and the Reader: A Cognitive Poetics Approach

2025-02-12T10:16:39+01:00

The relationship between literature and trauma has been a rich field of discussion over the past thirty years. Literary research has focused on how trauma is expressed and transformed through narrative techniques in particular. However, the reader’s role in processing and understanding trauma narratives remains a critical yet often underexplored area. This CfP seeks to address this gap by examining how readers engage with, interpret, and are affected by literary depictions of trauma, using the tools of cognitive poetics.

According to Cathy Caruth’s well-known definition, trauma provokes an epistemological crisis and bypasses linguistic references. Paradoxically, trauma is therefore experienced only belatedly through representation in the form of traumatic effects which literally represent the traumatic event. Literature thus becomes a privileged site for witnessing trauma through innovative literary forms that mimic and transmit the phenomenon to readers, rather than representing it in its literal form (Caruth 1996). Classical trauma theory has been shaped by psychoanalysis, deconstructionist literary theory, and the Holocaust as a defining historical trauma. However, the debate around the possibility of transmitting trauma through texts is ongoing. The concept of “empathic unsettlement,” where texts facilitate a feeling for traumatic experiences while maintaining critical distance, highlights the active role of the reader in the creation of meaning. It acknowledges the potential for readers to experience “secondary trauma,” as well as the need to avoid voyeurism and appropriation (LaCapra 2001, 102). Literary and cultural critics also raise ethical concerns about the potential for trauma narratives to become forms of “voyeuristic and arrogant spectatorship” (Sontag 2003, 9). Psychologists and neuroscientists continue to refine our understanding of trauma, emphasizing that much remains to be learned about how the brain and body process emotional pain (Pederson 2020). These evolving insights have the potential to transform how literary scholars approach and interpret depictions of trauma in literature.

In this special issue on Cognitive Poetic Approaches to Trauma Literature, we aim to focus on the reader’s involvement in trauma literature. Cognitive poetics provides a framework for understanding how readers process literary texts by examining the cognitive and affective mechanisms that mediate our understanding. We invite submissions that address, but are not limited to, the following questions:

How do cognitive and emotional responses shape the reader’s role as a witness to trauma? What ethical considerations emerge in engaging with traumatic narratives?
How do literary texts employ disnarration, temporal distortions, or spatial and ontological disruptions to convey trauma? What is the impact of these techniques on readers?
How do trauma narratives evoke bodily responses or mirror traumatic experiences in readers? What insights can cognitive literary studies offer about the processing of trauma in literature?
How can trauma literature address contemporary or less historically delineated forms of trauma? What relevance do these narratives hold for broader cultural and psychological contexts?
How do testimonial, fictional, and visual media intersect in their representation of trauma? How do multimodal approaches enrich our understanding of traumatic experiences?

Submission Guidelines

Please submit abstracts of 250-300 words, along with a brief bio, by 31 March. Full papers of 5000-7000 words will be due by 30 September. Submissions should be original, unpublished work in English. We welcome interdisciplinary approaches and encourage analyses of a wide range of literary and media forms, including but not limited to novels, poetry, drama, film, and graphic narratives.

Key Texts for Reference:

Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2004. Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. 1st ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Caruth, Cathy. 1995. Trauma : Explorations in Memory. Baltimore, Md: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Caruth, Cathy. 1996. Unclaimed Experience : Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Craps, Stef, Bryan Cheyette, Alan Gibbs, Sonya Andermahr, and Larissa Allwork. 2015. “Decolonizing Trauma Studies Round-Table Discussion.” Humanities (Basel) 4 (4): 905–23. https://doi.org/10.3390/h4040905.

Davis, Colin, Hanna Meretoja, Colin Davis, and Hanna Meretoja. 2020. The Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma. 1st edition. Oxford: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351025225.

Felman, Shoshana, and Dori Laub. 1992. Testimony : Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. New York: Routledge.

LaCapra, Dominick. 2001. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Pederson, Joshua. 2014. “Speak Trauma: Toward a Revised Understanding of Literary Trauma Theory.” Narrative 22 (3): 333-53.

Pederson, Joshua. 2020. “Cognitive Approaches to Trauma and Literature.” In Davis and Meretoja 2020, 277-87.

Sontag, Susan. 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Call for Papers: Call for papers Vol. 4 No. 1 (2025) – Moral emotions in fictional reception

2024-11-11T09:36:58+01:00

nCognito (https://ojs.bibl.u-szeged.hu/index.php/ncognito/) is the open access peer reviewed Journal of the Cognitive Poetics Research Group (https://kognitiv.szegedigermanisztika.hu/en/), published on the OJS journal platform of the University of Szeged (Hungary). The journal publishes presents interdisciplinary research in literary studies and cognitive science. It aims to publish papers that examine what cognitive processes shape the reception of literary texts, films and other media, such as digital media, using findings of cognitive and evolutionary psychology as their theoretical and empirical foundation. Each issue of the journal explores, with a thematic emphasis, the cognitive and emotional mechanisms that have developed during evolution and their manifestations (for example, the influence of causal thinking, mindreading, narrative empathy, tension generation and moral judgement) in different aesthetic practices.

In pursuit of this objective, the journal welcomes a wide range of papers in the following broad areas of cognitive poetic scholarship: the aestheticization of meaning through metaphor, metonymy, allegories and symbols; metaphor and metonymy in the narrative fabric; the cognitive nature of poeticism; the understanding of narrative stories and the (re)construction of meaning from literary texts; the construction of mental representations of characters and fictional worlds; the emotional processes involved in the reception of art and literature, and other interdisciplinary issues.

The journal was launched in 2022, and an average of two numbers are published each year. From 2025 on, the journal will be published exclusively (mainly) in English.

Our aim is to accept papers from a wide range of authors and reach a broader academic audience. (We encourage submissions from a diverse range of authors spanning various backgrounds and geographies.)

In the next issue of our journal (2025/1), we invite papers that address the question of what narrative structures and poetic devices are used to evoke moral emotions in fictional works.

It is generally assumed that fictional narratives often function as ethical thought experiments and their interpretation depends on the moral judgment of the reader or viewer. The moral judgment of the recipient therefore plays a central role in understanding narratives. Recent research in moral psychology suggests that moral judgment is best described as the simultaneous operation of two cognitive systems, known as the dual-process model: one system operates quickly, effortlessly, and automatically, while the other system is slow, effortful, and conscious. The former is typically referred to as intuition, which is often emotionally charged and leads to deontological judgments, while the latter is called rational decision-making, which typically results in utilitarian decisions (Greene 2009). Empirical research on the reception of aesthetic narratives has shown that emotional judgment tends to dominate literary and film reception; in other words, recipients are more inclined to consume media content that does not require significant cognitive investment (Raney 2005; 2011; Vaage 2015).

Topics for the next issue include but are not limited to the following questions:

How do narrative and prose-poetic devices shape the recipient’s moral emotions?
To what extent does the degree of transparency of the character’s consciousness affect the recipient’s emotional reactions?
To what extent does narrative point of view influence emotional reactions?
How do moral emotions develop depending on other emotions elicited by the text?
How do the moral emotions of embarrassment and shame affect self-reflection and self-development of characters in fictional narratives?
How are moral emotions elicited in autobiographical/autofictional writings? Do they work differently on the reader than in the case of “pure” fiction?
How do narrative strategies eliciting the same moral emotion in fiction vary across cultures? Does translation of novels into culturally distant languages involve the use of transculturation strategies?
How do video games and other interactive media engage players’ moral emotions through narrative choices and consequences?
How do adaptations of literary works into films or plays affect the moral emotions experienced by the audience?
How does the setting of a narrative (e.g., dystopian, utopian, historical) influence the moral emotions of the reader?
How are woke and social taboo themes explored in art?

References

Bal P. Matthijs, & Veltkamp, Martijn. 2013. How does fiction reading influence empathy? An experimental investigation on the role of emotional transportation. PLoS ONE, 8, e55341. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0055341

Gaut, Berys. 2003. “Reasons, motions, and fictions.” In Imagination, Philosophy and the Arts, edited by Matthew Kieran and Dominic Lopes, 14–34. New York: Routledge.

Davies, Stephen. 2009. “Responding emotionally to fictions.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 67. 269–284. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6245.2009.01358.x

Gendler, Tamar Szabó, and Karson Kovakovich. 2006. “Genuine rational fictional emotions.” In Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, edited by Matthew Kieran, 241–53. Oxford: Blackwell.

Greene, Joshua. 2009. “The Cognitive neuroscience of moral judgment.” In The Cognitive Neurosciences, edited by Michael S. Gazzaniga. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8029.003.0086

Haidt, Jonathan. 2003. “The moral emotions”. In Handbook of Affective Sciences, edited by R. J. Davidson, K. R. Scherer, & H. H. Goldsmith, 852–870. Oxford University Press.

Hogan, Patrick Colm. 2018. Literature and Emotion. Routledge.

Kieran, Matthew. 2003. “Forbidden knowledge. The challenge of immoralism.” In Art and Morality, edited by Jose Luis Bermudez and Sebastian Gardner, 56–73. London: Routledge.

Mar, Raymond & Oatley, Keith & Djikic, Maja & Mullin, Justin. 2011. “Emotion and narrative fiction. Interactive influences before, during, and after reading.” Cognition & Emotion. 25. 818–833. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2010.515151

Mellmann, Katja (2016): Empirische Emotionsforschung. In Handbuch Literatur und Emotionen, edited by Martin von Koppenfels & Cornelia Zumbusch: Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 158–175.

Meskin, Aaron, and Jonathan M. Weinberg. 2003. “Emotions, fiction, and cognitive architecture.” The British Journal of Aesthetics 43: 18–34. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/43.1.18

Raney, Arthur A. 2005. “Punishing Media Criminals and Moral Judgment: The Impact on Enjoyment.” Media Psychology, no. 7, 145–63. https://doi.org/10.1207/S1532785XMEP0702_2

Raney, Arthur A. 2011. “The role of morality in emotional reactions to and enjoyment of media entertainment.” Journal of Media Psychology 23 (1): 18–23. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-1105/a000027

Robinson, Jenefer. 2005. Deeper than Reason. Emotion and its Role in Literature, Music, and Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Vaage, Margrethe Bruun. 2015. “On the repulsive rapist and the difference between morality in fiction and real life.” In The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies, edited by Zunshine, Lisa, 421–39. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Call for Papers: Felhívás tanulmányok benyújtására az nCognito 2024/1-es számába

2023-11-30T09:46:43+01:00

A figyelem irányulása és irányítása irodalmi szövegekben és filmekben

A kognitív pszichológia egyik alaptétele, hogy a kognitív rendszer alapvetően a gazdaságosság elve alapján működik és a hatékony cselekvést támogatja. Ez a figyelem esetében azt jelenti, hogy az egyén a környezetéből őt érő információk egy részét kiszűri és azokra összpontosít, melyek az adott helyzetben relevánsak a megfelelő reakció tekintetében (Nobre 2018).
Hasonlóan működik ez az irodalmi szövegek olvasásakor és filmek befogadásakor is: a szöveg illetve film által felkínált információból az olvasó egyrészt saját előzetes tudása és preferenciái alapján (Rapp és Gerrig 2006; Kovács és Bálint 2016), másrészt az ábrázolási technikák függvényében bizonyos részleteket észrevesz, ezek figyelmének fókuszába kerülnek, míg mások a háttérben maradnak (alak-háttér észlelés). Az olvasói illetve nézői megértés és értelmezés ennek az interszubjektív figyelmi folyamatnak a függvényében történik, hiszen az értelmezés alapját a figyelmi fókuszba kerülő részletek képezik.
Elbeszélő szövegnek, drámának, versnek és filmnek különböző eszközei vannak a figyelemirányításra. A cselekményt ábrázoló műfajokra általánosságban véve érvényes, hogy a szereplők statikus leírása, valamint a helyzetleírások a hátteret képezik, az ábrázolt eseménysor pedig a figyelem központjába kerül (Langacker 2008, 58). Az eseményeket sem egyforma súllyal észleli az olvasó: a fókuszba jellemzően az elbeszélő szöveg azon komponensei kerülnek, melyek több közvetlen oksági viszonyban állnak más eseményekkel, mint a többi elem, valamint részei annak az oksági láncnak, amely a kezdő állapottól a végállapotig vezet (Trabasso és Sperry 1985). Empirikus felmérések azt is igazolják, hogy a főszereplők és a velük kapcsolatban levő tárgyak nagyobb figyelmet vonnak magukra, mint a többi szereplővel kapcsolatos tárgy (Holt és Groeben 2005, 325). A kognitív poétika textúra-modellje (Stockwell 2009) a befogadói figyelmet serkentő és irányító attraktorokat tekinti a szöveggel való interakció fő egységeinek, a lírai művek poétikusságát pedig az attraktorok nyelvi reprezentálásának módjaival hozza összefüggésbe.

Folyóiratunk következő számába olyan tanulmányokat várunk, melyek ezt a témakört járják körül.

A felhívásunkra jelentkező szerzőktől egy rövid absztraktot (max. 250 szó) szeretnénk kérni.
Az absztraktok leadási határideje 2023. január 15.
A tanulmányok leadási határideje 2023. március 31.

A szerzői útmutató és a cikkek formai követelményei az alábbi linken érhetők el:
Szerzői útmutató

Ajánlott irodalom

Alford, Lucy 2021. Forms of poetic attention. New York: Columbia University Press.

Holt, Nadine van, és Norbert Groeben. 2005. „Das Konzept des Foregrounding in der modernen
Textverarbeitungspsychologie”. Journal für Psychologie 13 (4): 311–32.

Kovács, András Bálint, és Katalin Bálint. 2016. „Focalization, Attachment, and Film Viewers’ Responses to Film Characters: Experimental Design with Qualitative Data Collection”. In Making Sense of Cinema: Empirical Studies into Film Spectators and Spectatorship, szerkesztette CarrieLynn D. Reinhard és Christopher J. Olson, 187–210. Bloomsbury Publishing Inc. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781501302978.

Langacker, Ronald W. 2008. Cognitive Grammar. A Basic Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nobre, Anna C. 2018. „Attention”. In Stevens’ Handbook of Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience. Volume 2: Sensation, Perception, and Attention, szerkesztette John T. Serences, Fourth edition, 241–316. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Rapp, David N., és Richard J. Gerrig. 2006. „Predilections for narrative outcomes. The impact of story contexts and reader preferences”. Journal of Memory and Language 54.: 54-67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2005.04.003.

Stocwell, Peter 2009. Texture. A Cognitive Aesthetics of Reading. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Trabasso, Tom, és Linda L. Sperry. 1985. „Causal Relatedness and Importance of Story Events”. Journal of Memory and Language 24: 595-611. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-596X(85)90048-8.