Texture - A Cognitive Aesthetics of Reading

by Peter Stockwell

Texture represents the latest advance in cognitive poetics. This book builds feeling and embodied experience on to the insights into meaningfulness which the cognitive approach to literature has achieved in recent years. Taking key familiar concepts such as characterisation, tone, empathy, and identification, the book aims to describe the natural experience of literary reading in a thorough and principled way. Accessibly and informatively written, Texture draws on stylistics, psycholinguistics, critical theory and neurology to explore the nature of reading verbal art. The aim is a new cognitive aesthetics of literature for its academic, student, professional and natural readers.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 2009

About the author

BA English Language and Literature (Liverpool 1988)

PhD (Liverpool 1991)

FEA (Fellow of the English Association) (from 2012)

He works in literary linguistics; cognitive poetics; stylistics; applied linguistics; science fiction; surrealism. he maintains an interest in sociolinguistics and in language education both in the UK and across the world.

At the University of Nottingham he is the Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement (Europe).

Reviews

[A L]

An eye-opening combination of semiotics, stylistics, reader-reception psychology, & cognitive poetics for what seems to be a spontaneously materialist ("experiential realist") model of criticism.

[Vanessa]

Ok let me attempt to summarise my thoughts about this book.

It is definitely not the most accessible theory if you do not know anything about linguistics. So some knowledge in that field is very helpful when trying to understand this approach. But I dare say that Stockwell's examples and graphs make it possible to process what he is saying even if you don't. I myself do not consider myself to be too knowledgeable about linguistics.

Once you do understand what he is trying to say, this approach is very interesting and opens up new ways to analyse for favourite literary texts. So it is worth getting worked up in, if you are looking for new ways to consider literature (and yes, I do realise that I am making a statement of an investment in this book, for those who have read it already).