Social and Emotional Literacy Peter Stockwell
University of Nottingham
Social and Emotional Literacy Peter Stockwell
University of Nottingham
[W]e should not expect literary theory to yield anything fundamentally new in its own field: we will continue paraphrasing Aristotle’s basic insights. I can see only one possibility for moving beyond what has long since been known: interdisciplinary engagement with the advancement of knowledge in other disciplines, at present above all a new field that has emerged only recently and consists of the philosophy of mind, psychological cognitivism, the affective sciences, cognitive linguistics, and neurological brain research – a cognitive turn to follow the linguistic one.
If I were a young scholar starting my career now, I would probably embrace this transdisciplinary field and set myself the aim of developing literary theory into a cognitive poetics.
(Harald Fricke 2007: 193)
Cognitive Poetics informativity: comprehension meaning
aesthetics: reception and texture feeling
ethics: schemas and worlds value ~ The application of cognitive science to understanding literary reading
~ Key concepts include prototypicality, embodiment, metaphorical projection
~ Treats reading as natural and within an ecology of language
~ Part of a literary-linguistic ( = stylistics) tradition > part of applied linguistics
~ Allows both social and individual dimensions to be theorised
~ Argues for renewed paradigms in literary scholarship
~ Accommodates artistic sensibility and scientific rationalism
~ Offers discipline, system and currency
~ Reasserts a humanistic perspective on the communicative arts
Cognitive Poetics ~ The application of cognitive science to understanding literary reading
~ Key concepts include prototypicality, embodiment, metaphorical projection
~ Treats reading as natural and within an ecology of language
~ Part of a literary-linguistic ( = stylistics) tradition > part of applied linguistics
~ Allows both social and individual dimensions to be theorised
~ Argues for renewed paradigms in literary scholarship
~ Accommodates artistic sensibility and scientific rationalism
~ Offers discipline, system and currency
~ Reasserts a humanistic perspective on the communicative arts
Psychology Stability of personality:
Open Conscientious Extroverted Agreeable Neurotic Inflexibility of personality:
curiosity ethical sense communicativeness empathy self-confidence The power of creative imagination:
projection adaptability plasticity - of personality - of fictional minds
– Reading as control
(‘The weave of the daughter’s life in modern San Francisco and her mother’s life in China holds you right to the end’, ‘It’s gripping stuff’, ‘I couldn’t put it down’)
– Reading as transportation / journey
(‘We follow the boy on his journey round the world’, ‘... quite a few battle scenes which I found slightly heavy going’)
– Reading as investment
(‘By the end I was emotionally drained but rewarded by it’, ‘It rewards your effort with a great payoff at the end’, ‘Well worth the investment – emotional and financial!’, ‘You get more out of it on each reading’, ‘If you can take a chance by putting a lot of energy into the first half, then the rest of the book is a real page-turner’, ‘Worth the effort’)
Individual investment Social investment
(literary stance) (sympathy)
ownership of resources transfer resources at work
initial loss effort
return
risk
faith
flow
trust
anticipation
improvement A conceptual net for INVESTMENT
Discourse world Text world MET HYP MOD NEG FBK World-switches shift of deictic projection
Participant-accessibility emotional involvement and distance
Cognitive repair sense of richness and intensity
Hanc tibi, Fronto pater, genetrix Flaccilla, puellam oscula commendo deliciasque meas, paruola ne nigras horrescat Erotion umbras oraque Tartarei prodigiosa canis. Impletura fuit sextae modo frigora brumae, uixisset totidem ni minus illa dies. Inter tam ueteres ludat lasciua patronos et nomen blaeso garriat ore meum. Mollia non rigidus caespes tegat ossa nec illi, terra, grauis fueris: non fuit illa tibi.
Epigrams, Book V, No.34
Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis) (AD 40 – c.100?) Henry George Bohn (1796-1884) – British editor and publisher
Peter Whigham (1925-1987) – British author and translator
Rose Williams – American writer and teacher
Peter Porter (b.1929) – Australian poet
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
Mother and sire, to you do I commend
Tiny Erotion, who must now descend,
A child, among the shadows, and appear
Before Hell’s bandog and hell’s gondolier.
Of six hoar winters she had felt the cold,
But lacked six days of being six years old.
Now she must come, all playful, to that place
Where the great ancients sit with reverend face;
Now lisping, as she used, of whence she came,
Perchance she names and stumbles at my name.
O’er these so fragile bones, let there be laid
A plaything for a turf; and for that maid
That swam light-footed as the thistle-burr
On thee, O Mother earth, be light on her.
Robert Louis Stevenson
On My First Daughter
Here lies to each her parents’ ruth,
Mary, the daughter of their youth:
Yet, all heaven’s gifts, being heaven’s due,
It makes the father, less to rue.
At six months’ end, she parted hence
With safety of her innocence;
Whose soul heaven’s queen, (whose name she bears)
In comfort of her mother’s tears,
Hath placed amongst her virgin-train:
Where, while that sever’d doth remain,
This grave partakes the fleshly birth.
Which cover lightly, gentle earth.
Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
On My First Son
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov’d boy,
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father, now. For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon ’scaped world’s and flesh’s rage,
And if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask’d, say here doth lie
Ben. Jonson his best piece of poetry.
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.
Ben Jonson
Constance:
Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then I have reason to be fond of grief.
Fare you well. Had you such a loss as I,
I could give better comfort than you do.
[She unbinds her hair]
I will not keep this form upon my head
When there is such disorder in my wit.
O Lord, my boy, my Arthur, my fair son,
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world,
My widow-comfort, and my sorrow’s cure!
[Exit]
William Shakespeare (1596), King John (III. iv. 93-105)
Discourse world Text world Constance World switch Grief as Arthur Shakespeare via actor playing Constance
Constance
grieving ‘Arthur’ lies in…
walks… with me
puts on…
repeats…
remembers me…
stuffs out…
Theatre audience
Long Distance
Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.
You couldn’t just drop in. You had to phone.
He’d put you off an hour to give him time
to clear away her things and look alone
as though his still raw love were such a crime.
He couldn’t risk my blight of disbelief
though sure that very soon he’d hear her key
scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.
He knew she’d just popped out to get the tea.
I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven’t both gone shopping; just the same,
in my new black leather phone book there’s your name
and the disconnected number I still call.
Tony Harrison (1978) T1: Father/mother/son, going shopping, popping out to get the tea
T2: Mother dies
T3: 2 years later, son regards father: re-iterated events (with micro-shift of ‘one hour’)
T4: Father dies
T5: son writes poem.
Poem sequence:
T3 tw - (T2 ws) - T3 tw (T1 ws) – T5 tw - (T4 ws)
Though my mother
as though his still raw love
though sure that very soon
just the same
Simulation = the principle of cognitive projection ~ attenuation from life to literary worlds
degree of attenuation
minimal maximal
LIFE LITERATURE ~ Personality is ‘soft assembled’ ~ Imagination gives us a projective capacity ~ Empathy (etc.) can be understood practised taught
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