From Space to Mental Space: A Cognitive Perspective into Narrative and the Architecture of the Human Mind

Abstract

Spatial metaphors are pervasive across models and theories about the structure and the meaning-making processes of the human mind: metaphorical and metonymic mappings (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Barcelona 2012), mental spaces (Fauconnier 1994, 1997) or semantic domains (Fauconnier and Sweetser 1996, Brandt 2004) are examples of this spatial ubiquity in cognitive science. \nIn narratology, categories of location and place are often correlated with narrative spaces as expression of a dynamics of unfolding of events, from initial situation to catastrophe to its consequence and result (Brandt 2009). Narrative as such is viewed as a compelling way of worldmaking (Nunning 2010, Goodman 1975), inviting further metaphors in the description of the reading experience, such as ‘being transported’ by means of ‘mentally performing’ narrated actions and experiences (Gerrig 2003).