The picturesque movement of the late eighteenth century is an important precursor of early Romant... more The picturesque movement of the late eighteenth century is an important precursor of early Romantic approaches to nature, and of the drive a century later to protect and conserve natural landscape in both England and North America (Bate 132). Recent critical discussion, however, has largely focused on connecting the picturesque with concurrent social and agricultural changes that saw millions of acres of land enclosed and harsh poor laws enacted. In considering the impact of the picturesque on American landscape management, Alison Byerly has described the picturesque as "an elitist appropriation of the environment" (53), while Ian MacLaren has castigated its "social myopia" (109). But the picturesque is a far from homogenous movement, and critical contention about what it represents is perhaps nowhere more evident than in discussion of William Gilpin's achievements. In this paper I argue, against the grain of recent criticism, that we should take Gilpin seriously as a writer about nature
A newly developed instrument, the Literary Response Questionnaire (LRQ), provides scales that mea... more A newly developed instrument, the Literary Response Questionnaire (LRQ), provides scales that measure seven different aspects of readers? orientation toward literary texts: Insight, Empathy, Imagery Vividness, Leisure Escape, Concern with Author, Story-Driven Reading, and Rejection of Literary Values. The present report presents evidence that each of these scales possesses satisfactory internal consistency, retest reliability, and factorial validity. Also, a series of five studies provided preliminary evidence that each scale may be located in a theoretically plausible network of relations with certain global personality traits (e.g., Absorption), with aspects of cognitive style (e.g., Regression in Service of the Ego), and with some of the learning skills that are relevant to effective work in the classroom (e.g., Elaborative Processing). In a variety of teaching and research settings, the LRQ may be a useful measure of individual differences in readers' orientation toward literary texts.
The notion that stylistic features of literary texts deautomatize perception is central to a trad... more The notion that stylistic features of literary texts deautomatize perception is central to a tradition of literary theory from Coleridge through Shklovsky and Mukaiovslj to Van Peer. Stylistic variations, known as foregrounding, hypothetically prompt defamiliarization, evoke feelings, and prolong reading time. These possibilities were tested in four studies in which segment by segment reading times and ratings were collected from readers of a short story. In each study, foregrounded segments of the story were associated with increased reading times, greater strikingness ratings, and greater affect ratings. Response to foregrounding appeared to be independent of literary competence or experience. Reasons for considering readers’ response to foregrounding as a distinctive aspect of interaction with literary texts are discussed.
Self-modifying feelings during literary reading were studied in relation to the personality trait... more Self-modifying feelings during literary reading were studied in relation to the personality trait, absorption. Participants read a short story, described their experience of 3 striking or evocative passages in the story, and completed the Tellegen Absorption Scale (Tellegen, 1982). Compared to readers with either low or moderate absorption scores, those high in absorption were more likely to report affective theme variations and self-perceptual shifts, especially during an emotionally complicated portion of the story. Further analyses indicated that, rather than emotional involvement per se, the relationship between absorption and self-perceptual shifts was mediated by the interaction between theme variations and a style of expressive reflection called metaphors of personal identification.
Differences between metaphors and similes have often been overlooked in the experimental literatu... more Differences between metaphors and similes have often been overlooked in the experimental literature. The comparison theory that is applied to explaining comprehension of simile may be less appropriate to the more transformational properties of metaphor.
Page 1. DAVID S. MIALL Metaphor as a Thought-Process THERE ARE AT LEAST three points of conten-ti... more Page 1. DAVID S. MIALL Metaphor as a Thought-Process THERE ARE AT LEAST three points of conten-tion that regularly crop up in recent discus-sions of metaphor: (1) what, if anything, happens to the meaning of the constituent ...
The fictional world imaginatively constituted during literary reading is sometimes compared witht... more The fictional world imaginatively constituted during literary reading is sometimes compared withthe imaginal world created during dreaming. At the core of both reading and dreaming may be thetype of attentional adjustment that occurs when departures from expected events emerge inexperience. During dreaming, markers of this attentional adjustment -- and of the relatedtransformations of dream content -- are the eye movements
ABSTRACT What is meant by a scientific approach to literature? I suggest that this question raise... more ABSTRACT What is meant by a scientific approach to literature? I suggest that this question raises several issues: the need to elucidate the object of study, that is, to examine readings that reflect the literariness of the text; also the question how literariness is to be identified, what may be distinctive about it. Then I suggest the importance of defining theories that draw from the literary domain, not outside it (such as psychology or linguistics), and that these should lead us to a set of hypotheses that can be subjected to empirical testing with readers. We should also have in the mind the possibility of learning what purposes literature fulfils for the individual or the wider community.
Setting appears to play a major role in regional fictional narratives, establishing connections b... more Setting appears to play a major role in regional fictional narratives, establishing connections between setting and the actions of characters, or between their mood and behaviour. The impact of specific regional settings in two short stories was examined empirically. A Canadian and a Brazilian text were coded for foregrounded features and for the presence of setting descriptions and characters' affective responses to setting.
Setting appears to play a major role in regional fictional narratives, establishing connections b... more Setting appears to play a major role in regional fictional narratives, establishing connections between setting and the actions of characters, or between their mood and behaviour. The impact of specific regional settings in two short stories was examined empirically. A Canadian and a Brazilian text were coded for foregrounded features and for the presence of setting descriptions and characters' affective responses to setting.
Hypertext has been promoted as a vehicle that will change literary reading, especially through it... more Hypertext has been promoted as a vehicle that will change literary reading, especially through its recovery of images, supposed to be suppressed by print, and through the choice offered to the reader by links. Evidence from empirical studies of reading, however, suggests that ...
A study of advanced level English students who read Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner i... more A study of advanced level English students who read Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner indicated that, after a lapse of 2 or more years, impactful loss (e.g., loss due to death) facilitated a mode of reading called expressive enactment. In this mode of reading: (a) stylistic features give narrative objects, characters, and places a sensuous and engaging presence; (b) mutations of the sensuously present "other" occur across striking or evocative reading moments; and (c) the reader becomes metaphorically identified with these transformations in ways that deepen self-perception. The moderating effects of vivid reminiscences on the relationship between loss and expressive enactment suggest that, just as the bereaved gradually become accepting of and perhaps drawn toward occasions that evoke poignant but ephemeral memories of the deceased, so, too, do they become accepting of and perhaps drawn toward the intense interplay between presence and absence that occurs during literary reading.
To initiate a debate about an advanced bio-psycho-social (bps) model we suggest a formal approach... more To initiate a debate about an advanced bio-psycho-social (bps) model we suggest a formal approach to better achieve communication of its up to now diverging and mutually isolated constituents. As the main problem with the current bps model researchers identified its lack of internal formal homogeneity. Its aims are respectable and widely accepted. Yet, its eclecticism and the loose, if at all given formal connection of the divergent approaches hinder its application on the qualified level of both advanced science and coherent humanities. Since an advanced bps model should be easier, more intuitive and offer an application to more topics than the previous model, we apply tools that turned out to be applicable to a wide range of topics, and we enact some basic initial choices that enable us to address entities that are fundamentally different on a structural level. The primordial tool we introduce is to apply the well established concept of sets formed in a dynamic. Members of sets ha...
Problem: Momentary states of bodily transformations usually are mapped as measured values of a gi... more Problem: Momentary states of bodily transformations usually are mapped as measured values of a given property, e.g. of arterial blood pressure or of pulmonary tissue dysfunction, with blood pressure being mapped via a high or low value, and pulmonary tissue dysfunction status as high or low FEV1. The same holds true for a property like stress level. With evaluated questionnaires, e.g. you can find values that map the momentary state of the property concerned – in our example a high or low value reflecting and mapping a corresponding stress level. Further behavioural properties can be mapped as e.g. degree of internalising or externalising behaviour. Transformation chains can be construed that lead from an e.g. high stress level value, combined with a high value for internalising behaviour to a high value of pulmonary dysfunction status mapped as a corresponding low value for FEV1. The problem is that to map and understand these transformation chains you have to go significantly deep...
The picturesque movement of the late eighteenth century is an important precursor of early Romant... more The picturesque movement of the late eighteenth century is an important precursor of early Romantic approaches to nature, and of the drive a century later to protect and conserve natural landscape in both England and North America (Bate 132). Recent critical discussion, however, has largely focused on connecting the picturesque with concurrent social and agricultural changes that saw millions of acres of land enclosed and harsh poor laws enacted. In considering the impact of the picturesque on American landscape management, Alison Byerly has described the picturesque as "an elitist appropriation of the environment" (53), while Ian MacLaren has castigated its "social myopia" (109). But the picturesque is a far from homogenous movement, and critical contention about what it represents is perhaps nowhere more evident than in discussion of William Gilpin's achievements. In this paper I argue, against the grain of recent criticism, that we should take Gilpin seriously as a writer about nature
A newly developed instrument, the Literary Response Questionnaire (LRQ), provides scales that mea... more A newly developed instrument, the Literary Response Questionnaire (LRQ), provides scales that measure seven different aspects of readers? orientation toward literary texts: Insight, Empathy, Imagery Vividness, Leisure Escape, Concern with Author, Story-Driven Reading, and Rejection of Literary Values. The present report presents evidence that each of these scales possesses satisfactory internal consistency, retest reliability, and factorial validity. Also, a series of five studies provided preliminary evidence that each scale may be located in a theoretically plausible network of relations with certain global personality traits (e.g., Absorption), with aspects of cognitive style (e.g., Regression in Service of the Ego), and with some of the learning skills that are relevant to effective work in the classroom (e.g., Elaborative Processing). In a variety of teaching and research settings, the LRQ may be a useful measure of individual differences in readers' orientation toward literary texts.
The notion that stylistic features of literary texts deautomatize perception is central to a trad... more The notion that stylistic features of literary texts deautomatize perception is central to a tradition of literary theory from Coleridge through Shklovsky and Mukaiovslj to Van Peer. Stylistic variations, known as foregrounding, hypothetically prompt defamiliarization, evoke feelings, and prolong reading time. These possibilities were tested in four studies in which segment by segment reading times and ratings were collected from readers of a short story. In each study, foregrounded segments of the story were associated with increased reading times, greater strikingness ratings, and greater affect ratings. Response to foregrounding appeared to be independent of literary competence or experience. Reasons for considering readers’ response to foregrounding as a distinctive aspect of interaction with literary texts are discussed.
Self-modifying feelings during literary reading were studied in relation to the personality trait... more Self-modifying feelings during literary reading were studied in relation to the personality trait, absorption. Participants read a short story, described their experience of 3 striking or evocative passages in the story, and completed the Tellegen Absorption Scale (Tellegen, 1982). Compared to readers with either low or moderate absorption scores, those high in absorption were more likely to report affective theme variations and self-perceptual shifts, especially during an emotionally complicated portion of the story. Further analyses indicated that, rather than emotional involvement per se, the relationship between absorption and self-perceptual shifts was mediated by the interaction between theme variations and a style of expressive reflection called metaphors of personal identification.
Differences between metaphors and similes have often been overlooked in the experimental literatu... more Differences between metaphors and similes have often been overlooked in the experimental literature. The comparison theory that is applied to explaining comprehension of simile may be less appropriate to the more transformational properties of metaphor.
Page 1. DAVID S. MIALL Metaphor as a Thought-Process THERE ARE AT LEAST three points of conten-ti... more Page 1. DAVID S. MIALL Metaphor as a Thought-Process THERE ARE AT LEAST three points of conten-tion that regularly crop up in recent discus-sions of metaphor: (1) what, if anything, happens to the meaning of the constituent ...
The fictional world imaginatively constituted during literary reading is sometimes compared witht... more The fictional world imaginatively constituted during literary reading is sometimes compared withthe imaginal world created during dreaming. At the core of both reading and dreaming may be thetype of attentional adjustment that occurs when departures from expected events emerge inexperience. During dreaming, markers of this attentional adjustment -- and of the relatedtransformations of dream content -- are the eye movements
ABSTRACT What is meant by a scientific approach to literature? I suggest that this question raise... more ABSTRACT What is meant by a scientific approach to literature? I suggest that this question raises several issues: the need to elucidate the object of study, that is, to examine readings that reflect the literariness of the text; also the question how literariness is to be identified, what may be distinctive about it. Then I suggest the importance of defining theories that draw from the literary domain, not outside it (such as psychology or linguistics), and that these should lead us to a set of hypotheses that can be subjected to empirical testing with readers. We should also have in the mind the possibility of learning what purposes literature fulfils for the individual or the wider community.
Setting appears to play a major role in regional fictional narratives, establishing connections b... more Setting appears to play a major role in regional fictional narratives, establishing connections between setting and the actions of characters, or between their mood and behaviour. The impact of specific regional settings in two short stories was examined empirically. A Canadian and a Brazilian text were coded for foregrounded features and for the presence of setting descriptions and characters' affective responses to setting.
Setting appears to play a major role in regional fictional narratives, establishing connections b... more Setting appears to play a major role in regional fictional narratives, establishing connections between setting and the actions of characters, or between their mood and behaviour. The impact of specific regional settings in two short stories was examined empirically. A Canadian and a Brazilian text were coded for foregrounded features and for the presence of setting descriptions and characters' affective responses to setting.
Hypertext has been promoted as a vehicle that will change literary reading, especially through it... more Hypertext has been promoted as a vehicle that will change literary reading, especially through its recovery of images, supposed to be suppressed by print, and through the choice offered to the reader by links. Evidence from empirical studies of reading, however, suggests that ...
A study of advanced level English students who read Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner i... more A study of advanced level English students who read Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner indicated that, after a lapse of 2 or more years, impactful loss (e.g., loss due to death) facilitated a mode of reading called expressive enactment. In this mode of reading: (a) stylistic features give narrative objects, characters, and places a sensuous and engaging presence; (b) mutations of the sensuously present "other" occur across striking or evocative reading moments; and (c) the reader becomes metaphorically identified with these transformations in ways that deepen self-perception. The moderating effects of vivid reminiscences on the relationship between loss and expressive enactment suggest that, just as the bereaved gradually become accepting of and perhaps drawn toward occasions that evoke poignant but ephemeral memories of the deceased, so, too, do they become accepting of and perhaps drawn toward the intense interplay between presence and absence that occurs during literary reading.
To initiate a debate about an advanced bio-psycho-social (bps) model we suggest a formal approach... more To initiate a debate about an advanced bio-psycho-social (bps) model we suggest a formal approach to better achieve communication of its up to now diverging and mutually isolated constituents. As the main problem with the current bps model researchers identified its lack of internal formal homogeneity. Its aims are respectable and widely accepted. Yet, its eclecticism and the loose, if at all given formal connection of the divergent approaches hinder its application on the qualified level of both advanced science and coherent humanities. Since an advanced bps model should be easier, more intuitive and offer an application to more topics than the previous model, we apply tools that turned out to be applicable to a wide range of topics, and we enact some basic initial choices that enable us to address entities that are fundamentally different on a structural level. The primordial tool we introduce is to apply the well established concept of sets formed in a dynamic. Members of sets ha...
Problem: Momentary states of bodily transformations usually are mapped as measured values of a gi... more Problem: Momentary states of bodily transformations usually are mapped as measured values of a given property, e.g. of arterial blood pressure or of pulmonary tissue dysfunction, with blood pressure being mapped via a high or low value, and pulmonary tissue dysfunction status as high or low FEV1. The same holds true for a property like stress level. With evaluated questionnaires, e.g. you can find values that map the momentary state of the property concerned – in our example a high or low value reflecting and mapping a corresponding stress level. Further behavioural properties can be mapped as e.g. degree of internalising or externalising behaviour. Transformation chains can be construed that lead from an e.g. high stress level value, combined with a high value for internalising behaviour to a high value of pulmonary dysfunction status mapped as a corresponding low value for FEV1. The problem is that to map and understand these transformation chains you have to go significantly deep...
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