Universal minds

The key to fictionality is the construction of fictional minds. A fictional narrative is, in essence, the presentation of the mental functioning of the characters who inhabit the storyworld created by that narrative. Readers enter a storyworld primarily by using their knowledge of how to interpret other people’s thought processes in the real world in order to try to follow the workings of characters’ minds. Otherwise, readers will lose the plot. In this essay, I will suggest that there are twelve features relating to fictional minds that recur in all or nearly all novels. This argument will be put into three contexts: the cognitive turn in literature studies, discussions regarding the concept of narrative universals, and the longstanding debate on how the term narrative should be properly defined. I will also argue that my generalizations regarding the twelve features are not invalidated by a few counterexamples, and that some, particularly postmodern, novels gain their power and impact precisely from their attempts to undermine the default assumptions contained in these features. 1. The cognitive turn The background to my argument for the existence of universal minds in novels is the widespread cognitive turn in the study of literature. Examples include such three research areas as cognitive narratology, cognitive approaches to literature, and cognitive poetics. Cognitive narratology has applied the findings of the various cognitive sciences to a number of different aspects of the narrative comprehension process. Notable examples of the success of this approach include Ryan (1991), Fludernik (1996), and Herman (2002). The second new development, cognitive approaches to literature, di¤ers from the first in that it has emerged from literary criticism generally, rather than from literary or narrative theory, and has Semiotica 165–1/4 (2007), 205–225 0037–1998/07/0165–0205 DOI 10.1515/SEM.2007. 040 6 Walter de Gruyter poetry and drama as its subject matter as well as narrative. One of its particular areas of interest is the analysis of metaphor. Among important works in this field are Turner (1991), Scarry (1999), and Zunshine (2006). Cognitive poetics is an area of applied linguistics that, like the previous area, is concerned with poetry as well as narrative and, in particular, with the role of metaphor. It di¤ers from the other two fields in its use of specifically linguistic tools for the analysis of texts. Leading texts in this field include Stockwell (2002), Emmott (1997), and Gavins and Steen (2003). All of these approaches have made a number of important contributions to our understanding of the reading process. As my interest is in the fictional minds of characters in novels it seems to me to make sense to explore the various disciplines concerned with the study of real minds such as the philosophy of mind; social, cognitive, and discursive psychology; cognitive science; and psycholinguistics. My cognitive approach is a very pragmatic and undogmatic one: if these real-mind disciplines assist our study of fictional minds, then that is fine; if they do not, then there is no reason to use them. However, it has been my experience that we understand fictional minds much better when we apply to them some of the work done on real minds by psychologists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists. In fact, I would go further and argue that all serious students of literature are cognitivists, whether they like it or not. We all think of novels in terms of the mental functioning of characters. Otherwise, we would not be able to read them. 2. Narrative universals One of the tasks of the various cognitive approaches is to consider whether or not narrative universals exist. That is, are there any features of narratives that are universal, in the sense that they are common to all narrative traditions? Work on this question has been done by Patrick Colm Hogan (2003). He has looked at patterns of stories across a wide range of written and oral traditions within various cultures to see whether he can identify recurring patterns and has concluded that he can do so. He defines narrative universals as ‘features of stories or discourse that recur across a greater number of genetically and areally unrelated traditions than predicted by chance’ (Hogan 2005: 384). In his view, narrative universals can be identified on both sides of the story and discourse distinction. An example of a discourse universal is the existence of di¤erent types of temporal ordering. Examples of story universals include universals of scene (the association of lovers and birds), character (the heroes who strives for goals), and event (the quest). Within the last-named category, Hogan has found three recurring types of story structure: romantic, he206 A. Palmer