Reuven Tsur (Tel Aviv University)

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Reuven Tsur (Tel Aviv University)


Light, Fire, Prison
A Cognitive Analysis of Religious Imagery in Poetry

(abstract)



This paper explores the cognitive foundations and the literary applications of spatial imagery. There seem to be several good reasons to have recourse to spatial imagery; this paper will explore two of them. On the one hand, concrete visual images constitute a bundle of features and as such, they allow efficient coding of information. This, in turn, grants the cognitive system great flexibility and efficiency both in creative thinking and in poetry. A single image encoding a variety of meaning units can be regarded as an instance of the aesthetic principle "unity-in-variety". This also can be said to save considerable mental energy, and according to a Freudian conception, one possible source of pleasure is the saving of mental energy. On the other hand, the recoding of information into spatial imagery may help the cognitive system to overcome some of its inherent limitations. Thus, fast-changing or lowly-differentiated information may be recoded into a more stable and differentiated spatial template, as in the case of sound pitch into musical scales; or conceptually presented information may become less differentiated in perception, owing to recoding into Gestalt-free and thing-free imagery. Such lowly-differentiated qualities may be reinforced by the mechanisms of spatial orientation, or the mechanisms for alleviating cognitive overload. From such a perspective, the Lakoffean conception of conceptual metaphor based on spatial imagery appears to be congenial to human cognition, but still rather simplistic. The paper will attempt to show how religious ideas are turned with the help of figurative language into verbal imitations of religious experience. In this respect, I will point out two stylistic modes, "Metaphysical" and "Mystic-Romantic". Perhaps the most surprising thing about those two modes is the recognition how similar are the techniques by which the opposite effects are achieved. The Metaphysical mode seeks to yield an insight into matters of religious significance in a flash, through a sudden transition from complexity to unity. The phenomenological quality of this kind of insight is typically witty. The "Romantic" or "Mystic" mode seeks to achieve the verbal imitation of some experiential contact, of an intuitive rather than conceptual nature, with some reality that lies beyond the absolute limit of our experience. Some poems, at least, are remarkably successful in translating those mystic ideas into verbal imitations of mystic experiences. The paper will also consider the problem of fusing the Biblical conception of a personal Creator with the Neo-Platonic conception of creation as light emanation. The handling of the images of light, fire and prison will be discussed at great length in the works of four English poets, Sir Philip Sidney, John Donne, William Wordsworth and T.S. Eliot, and of two Mediaeval Poets, Hebrew and Armenian, Shlomo Ibn Gabirol and Kostandin of Erznka. Discussion of the latter will also include distinctions concerning three central notions of literary criticism, allegory, symbol and archetypal patterns.

KEY WORDS: cognitive poetics; metaphor; spatial imagery; efficient coding; Gestalt-free; mystic poetry.


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Original file name: K+L abstract - converted on Thursday, 9 July 1998, 07:47

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