Narratology and Cognitive Science: A Problematic Relation

MARIE LAURE-RYAN. "Narratology and Cognitive Science: A Problematic Relation." / 469 Cognitive approaches have been widely hailed as "the next big thing" in the beleaguered field of literary studies. But despite a widespread interest for what narrative means for the life of the mind, the significance of the concrete contributions of the so-called cognitive sciences to narratology is far from enjoying broad acknowledgment. In this paper I propose a critical examination of the various approaches to narrative that can be called "cognitive," from hard scientific studies based on brain scanning, to psychological experiments that test the reaction of subjects to simple texts composed specially for the occasion, to the import of concepts from the more speculative disciplines of the cognitive sciences, such as social psychology or philosophy of mind. I distinguish three areas of investigation for cognitive narratology: (1) the minds of characters; (2) the mental activity of the reader (spectator, player, etc); (3) narrative as a way of thinking. Against the tendency to conceive cognitive narratology as a matter of borrowing ready-made concepts from the cognitive sciences and applying them top-down to texts, I argue in favor of trusting the ability of our own minds to figure out how the mind creates, decodes and uses stories.