Foundations of a Scientific Cognitive Theory for Literary Criticism

Based on Noam Chomsky’s argument that the faculty of language is primarily a
tool of thought whose purpose is to interpret the world, this dissertation argues that
reading literature provides a cognitive experience like John Gardner’s “Fictive Dream”
that mimics our interpretive experience of the world. Literary experience exploits
language as an epistemological faculty that makes aspects of the external world
intelligible. Yet the faculty of language is also capable of evoking entirely mental worlds
that do not reflect the mindexternal
world. Because the literary experience is entirely
mindinternal,
even the cultural knowledge we bring into play for its understanding still
relies on innate features of language. Thus, during the act of reading, we hold this
cultural knowledge in abeyance, allowing the text to structure how we bring it to bear on
the experience as a whole.
A scientific approach to literature can help uncover principles to further elucidate
the literaryepistemological
experience. Whereas much literary criticism assumes that a critic’s purpose is to mine a text for its deeper meaning, this dissertation argues for a
Cognitive Formalist approach in which criticism serves not simply to explain the
experience evoked by any particular text according to linguisticepistemological
principles, but also to evaluate the moral implications of that specific textual experience.
As a means of demonstrating potential implications of a scientific cognitive
approach to literary criticism based on linguisticepistemological
understanding, the
current study offers sample passages from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
These passages allow us to offer first approximations of some explanatory principles of
the literaryepistemological
experience, such as the importance of fictive time and
fictional event sequences, which in turn gives us greater insight into how, for example,
verb tense and aspect contribute to the evocation of the action of fiction in the reader’s
mind. Ultimately, the fictive vantage point constructed by the text allows the reader
access to a complex moral framework in which fictive characters are understood to make
choices that will in turn set the stage for the reader’s own ethical reception of the text and
the experience it offers.