FÄLLT AUS! Online-Kolloquium: Do. 1. Febr. 2024, Dr. Liz Finnigan (SRC): Spatial Cognition and Literary Prose: The Perception of Patterning: Zeit: 14:15 Uhr

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Ort: https://uni-freiburg.zoom.us/j/69965024181?pwd=MnROeHQ4TUlaZUxrYnpsTXVtc0lwZz09

Meeting-ID: 699 6502 4181
Kenncode: ptJJW536M

Abstract: Using Gestalt theories ofperception, and drawing upon the visual models proposed by Gibson (1986),Kosslyn (1992) and Chen (2005), this paper argues that the patterns are aperceptual record of the visual primitive i.e. the aspect of an image we seefirst, which then survives translation within episodic memory, particularlyepisodic future thinking, which has the capacity to produce imagined/fictionalscenarios through a series of established neural connections (Schacter et al.2017). Cognitively, the patterning can be thought of as the ‘reactivation’ ofthe visual primitive in the perceptual system that is retrieved in its originalform via a series of synaptic relationships between the hippocampus, theentorhinal cortex and a sensory cue during an episodic event that allow thepatterns to proceed unaltered to associative systems. This section of the paperfurther examines the relationship between visual and verbal processes andargues that it is the translation of the former into the latter, without neuralinterference, that allows the patterns to become manifest. I suggest that thesepatterns are rendered visible in writing by the slowing effect of translatingthought into language, which I refer to as syntactic deceleration. Thus, thispaper broadly introduces the links between memory, imagination and, language asa cognitive model of explanation for this patterning.

Finally, this model isapplied to extracts from Victorian, Modernist and Postmodernist texts anddemonstrated through working examples. In doing so, it re-interrogates theavant-garde relationship to visual representation through writers such asBeckett and Joyce by revealing their unexpected adherence to patterning despitecomplex narrative styles.