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In this study I analyse the ghost story “Harry” (Timperley 1955) within the paradigms of embodied cognition (Gallese 2005, 2017), cognitive ambiguity (Zeki 2006), and storyworld possible selves theory (Author, 2014, 2018). My aim is to find out which storyworld possible selves, or “imagings of the self in storyworlds” (Author, 2014: 119) are likely to be projected by readers, and the extent to which these interact with the ambiguity that characterizes ghost naratives. The findings suggest that, in “Harry,” ambiguity (Zeki 2006) contributes to the mental construction of two alternative, equally certain, storyworlds, which I call multi-stable storyworlds, respectively connected to uncanny and rational meaning constructions. The storyworld possible selves projected in these mental scenarios seem to predominantly involve emotional responses associated with fear, family relations, and ethical perceptions of social justice.

This study explores pictorial narrativity in Venetian painter Lorenzo Lotto's Portrait of a Young Man in his Studio (ca. 1527), with attention to the visual representation of mental activity as a prompt for the projection of viewers' storyworld possible selves. The study discusses the extent to which the portrayed gentleman's intriguing gaze, lost in introspection but at the same time seemingly fixed on viewers, can be considered a pictorial equivalent to the doubly-deictic you in verbal narratives. The doubly-deictic effect of the character's gaze is further argued to provide access to the careful, dazzling accumulation of pictorial symbolism in the depicted studio as a pictorial stream-of-consciousness representation of the character's frame of mind— memories, hopes, dreams, and fears—functioning in ways similar to paratactic accumulation in verbal narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study empirically investigates reader responses to the one-page graphic narrative 'City' within the theoretical framework of storyworld possible selves. These are blended structures resulting from the conceptual integration of two input spaces: the mental representation that readers construct for the narrator or character that perspectivizes a narrative, and the mental representation that readers entertain for themselves, or self-concept. In our study, we use a questionnaire to elicit information about the internal organization of storyworld possible selves blends in 15 real readers, and we discuss the bearing of both collectively shared and idiosyncratic storyworld possible self blends on character construction, emotional response, and narrative construal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]