Shakespeare and Conceptual Blending: Cognition, Creativity, Criticism. By Michael Booth

Abstract

To Shakespeareans familiar with conceptual blending theory, pioneered nearly twenty years ago by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner (The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities, 2002), this book by Michael Booth offers a welcome contribution both to Shakespeare studies and to the modest-sized, interdisciplinary, and international fellowship of scholars working in the field of cognitive poetics. Cognitive poetics has frequently been deployed as a close-reading method for poetry, but its potential for more wide-ranging applications across other literary genres has long been evident to those attuned to the interdisciplinary field of cognitive linguistics, from which blending developed. Booth is the first to take on the enormity of applying blending to the full range of Shakespeare’s texts. As is to be expected, he offers readings across the traditional genres. He also crosses through what we might call thought-states that characterize key patterns of conceptual organization throughout Shakespeare’s works: patterns that sometimes, but not always, correspond to genre. He titles his main chapters “Shakespeare’s Stories,” “Shakespeare’s Wit,” “Shakespeare’s Poetry,” and “Criticism and the Blending Mind.” Recategorizing in this way allows Booth to address a broader-than-usual sample of Shakespeare’s work, including twenty-eight plays, two verse narratives, and a handful of sonnets. Booth’s approach also allows him to launch challenges to many critical orthodoxies, as I discuss further below.