Volume 43, Issue 1

This study focuses on the role played by cognitive coherence in non-expert readers' comprehension of structurally complex cases of literary discourse, both poetry and prose. Based on evidence from classroom-acquired data, it supports the claim made by mainstream sources that, in authorial creative uses of structural coherence, non-expert readers may invoke alternative mental patterns of coherence from non-specific cognitive domains to fill up difficult portions of text (cf. Grabe 2009). The search for cognitive coherence is thus used as a default comprehension strategy to satisfy non-experts' needs for mental model construction, especially when there are failures in the implementation of other linearity-based coherence-related comprehension strategies, such as early topic establishment (Giora 1997), reference based on proximity as a builder of discourse coherence (Hobbs 1996), and comprehension based on relevance and the achievement of cognitive effects at low processing cost (Wilson and Matsui 2000).

Current theoretical accounts of the telling vs. showing distinction suffer from the incompatibility of several very plausible intuitions. This leads to accounts which seem not even to be addressing the same phenomena. Going back to Lubbock and Genette, we uncover the intuitions in question, show that they are incompatible and propose a unificatory account, which takes a particular type of imagining on the part of reader to lie at the heart of the telling vs. showing distinction.

This article explores the role of punctuation and typography in readers' engagement with literary narrative, and with fictional characters in particular. I argue that unconventional typography and punctuation marks can be used to convey the phenomenological ``feel'' of characters' (and narrators') experiences, thereby becoming a vehicle for consciousness representation in narrative. Aiming to contribute to the discussion on readers' responses to characters within cognitive narratology, I hypothesize that such responses can be guided by non-verbal cues as well as by the verbal strategies traditionally examined by narrative theorists. I explore two different dimensions of the nexus between punctuation, typography, and consciousness representation: firstly, because of their ``separating'' function graphic markers can render the temporal structuring of consciousness itself; secondly, unconventional graphic cues can exploit the ``evaluative'' function of punctuation and typography in order to convey altered states of consciousness such as dream experience, extreme emotions, and cognitive disorientation.