Search

Summary: 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 re, 2017, Includes bibliography., Degree granted: Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017., Collection: FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection