Psychonarratology: Foundations for the Empirical Study of Literary Response

The field of psychonarratology represents an interdisciplinary collaboration between cognitive psychology and discourse processing, and narratology and literary studies. This work provides a broad, integrative framework for pursuing research that is approachable by researchers from both disciplinary backgrounds. Marina Bortolussi and Peter Dixon survey the important problems in literary studies and demonstrate how the methodological and empirical tools of cognitive psychology are applied in this new approach.

"An important book....It is one thing to announce a new interdisciplinary paradigm, yet quite another thing to systematically implement it....In their book [Bortolussi and Dixon] systematically develop a program of research in psychonarratology....this provides a powerful framework for the investigation of narrative....Mandatory reading for my students." Newsletter of the International Society for the Empirical Study of Literature

Includes bibliographical references (p. 275-293) and index.

The field of psychonarratology represents an interdisciplinary collaboration between cognitive psychology and discourse processing, and narratology and literary studies. This work provides a broad, integrative framework for pursuing research that is approachable by researchers from both disciplinary backgrounds. Marina Bortolussi and Peter Dixon survey the important problems in literary studies and demonstrate how the methodological and empirical tools of cognitive psychology are applied in this new approach.

This book provides a broad, integrative framework for pursuing research in the field of psychonarratology.

1. Introduction; 2. Preliminaries; 3. The narrator; 4. Events and plot; 5. Characters and characterization; 6. Perception and focalization; 7. Represented speech and thought; 8. Directions and unsolved problems; Appendix. Evaluating evidence.