INTEGRATED MODEL OF POETIC TEXT INTERPRETATION

Abstract

The paper focuses on the problem of interpretability of poetic texts and proposes an integrated model of their interpretation. This model is viewed as a cognitive schema (a set of cognitive operations and procedures) of a poetic text processing which may result in prototypical or non-prototypical reading of the text. Prototypical is a central, cognitive reading, the one which explicates an easily recognizable, identifiable message of the text. A non-prototypical reading presupposes multiple interpretations, which might lead either to overinterpretation or to underinterpretation (U.Eco’s terms), depending on the cognitive strategies and tactics, employed by the interpreter. Imagery space exploration and text world navigation are regarded as the main cognitive strategies of poetic text interpretation. The first one envisages operations of conceptual analysis of verbal poetic images and their functions in the image space of poetic texts. The second is realized by various cognitive operations and procedures of restructuring text worlds via the analysis of schemata as structures of knowledge verbalized in the poetic text. It is based on the possible-world theory, complemented by schema-theory and basic assumptions of the theory of cognitive metaphor and conceptual integration (blending).