Abstract
This essay proposes a comparison between Cognitive Narratology, which studies narrative in its many forms, emphasizing mental/biological processes as similar in reader and author, and Digital Humanities’ distant reading approach which identifies literary systems and forms more globally, drawing on the computer as a tool for interpretation. The main ideas of cognitive narratology developed by one of its most principal theorists, David Herman, are presented focusing on the definition and relationships between reader and text. Cognitive narratology as interdisciplinary approach towards close reading are mentioned to dialogue with the main topics of the digital humanities literary approach, especially the ideas delineated by Franco Moretti. The contrast of both approaches will focus on the role of the reader by finding some contact points between them.
Highlights
This essay proposes to make a comparison between cognitive narratology, which studies narrative in its many forms, emphasizing mental/biological processes as similar in reader and author, and the digital humanities’ distant reading approach, which identifies literary systems and forms more globally, drawing on the computer as a tool for interpretation
Reading in cognitive narratology and distant reading in the digital humanities approach matter, how “narrative-like” a given story seems to be and can be explained in terms of the relation between the explicit prompts included in a text or a discourse and the scripts on which readers or listeners rely in processing those prompts; so, it shows the necessity of viewing the narrative itself as a relational construct
Part I will bring ideas of the digital humanities approach to literary studies, fundamentally the idea of distant reading and how it can open the field to analyze later the contact points with cognitive narratology
Summary
In the Narrative theory and the cognitive sciences, Herman (2003) proposes an interdisciplinary approach to the narrative theory, called the cognitive turn, which is the study of various forms of verbal art and particular narratives. Reading in cognitive narratology and distant reading in the digital humanities approach matter, how “narrative-like” a given story seems to be and can be explained in terms of the relation between the explicit prompts included in a text or a discourse and the scripts on which readers or listeners rely in processing those prompts; so, it shows the necessity of viewing the narrative itself as a relational construct. Following Herman’s essay “Stories as a tool for thinking”, in Narrative theory and the cognitive sciences, we can infer that the reader: incorporates stories into a wide array of practices, using narrative as a problem-solving strategy in many contexts In this sense, narrative functions as a powerful and basic tool for thinking, enabling users of stories to produce and interpret literary texts Part I will bring ideas of the digital humanities approach to literary studies, fundamentally the idea of distant reading and how it can open the field to analyze later the contact points with cognitive narratology
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