Cognitive Theory

When we first started this class, my knowledge of narrative was very limited. In fact, I was one of those individuals who assumed that narrative and story meant the same thing. Of course now, fifteen weeks later, I know better. Out of the many theories we covered this semester, I found most to be useful. Many of them changed my perspectives on fictional narratives. In fact, I would not say that I encountered a theory that was least useful to me. I would, however, like to say that I want to learn more about the cognitive theory of narratology.

Herman was the first one to introduce us to such a theory, and now that it's the end of the semester and I know what I know about narrative theory as a field, I must say his contribution is very important, even though much of his scholarship is difficult to understand at first. In the future, I would most certainly like to look further into his cognitive theory approach because so much of understanding and evaluating a narrative deals with the relationship between the physical author, the text, and the reader herself. 

On cognitive theory, Herman attempts to understand the reader and what she is bringing to the text. The reader, after all, has power in determining the implied author, and she is also responsible with understanding and evaluating the narrator as reliable or unreliable. As much scholarship in narratology thus far has revealed, a physical author wrote the text in a certain way, and because of this, she has control of the reader. However, what the reader understands of the text is largely up to her. Herman writes, "engaging with stories entails mapping discourse cues onto WHEN, WHERE, WHO, HOW, and WHY dimensions of mentally figured worlds; the interplay among these dimensions accounts for the structure as well as the representation functions and overall impact of the worlds in question" (17). Some of these will be obvious because of the plot as some of us may underread, but for those of us who tend to overread a fictional narrative, then these simple questions are addressed on a much deeper level. Herman continues, "narrative world making entails at least two different types of inferences: those bearing on what sort of world is being evoked by the act of telling, and those bearing on why (and with what consequences) the act is being performed at all" (17). The narrator tells a story, but the reader's attachment to that story becomes a very crucial part of the relationship between the physical author, the text, and the reader. The author has control over his text and the narrator, but the author does not have control over what the narrative comes to mean to the reader. 

Time and time again, the scholars of narrative theory find themselves in a circular discussion of all things narrative, and although their points are all valid, creating concepts that applied to all literature across the board becomes very hard. This is the confusing yet intriguing part of narrative. If as Abbott claims narratives reflect the real world, then the story and dialogue are and must be two very different emerging concepts. Cognitive theory is at the root of this, but again, like anything else in narrative theory, the one flaw cognitive theory has it's the inability to introduce a general concept that applies to fictional narratives across the board.