A Cognitive Poetic Approach to Paratext: Horace Walpole’s Prefaces to The Castle of Otranto. A Gothic Story

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Authors

  • Anna Kędra-Kardela Instytut Anglistyki, Uniwersytet Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej, Poland

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26485/ZRL/2018/61.4/4

Keywords:

cognitive poetics, paratext, Ronald W. Langacker, intersubjectification, Current Discourse Space, Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto

Abstract

Based on an analysis of two Prefaces to Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto. A Gothic Story, the paper offers a cognitive poetics view of paratext, a literary device defined by Genette as “a threshold of interpretation”. Viewed as a symptom of the author’s presence “with-in” and “with-out” text, paratextual information is held to play an important role in text interpretation. It is claimed that a literary work’s interpretation is a result of the speaker/author – hearer/reader meaning negotiation which takes place in the Current Discourse Space (Langacker 2008) and involves intersubjectification, a cognitive process referred to by Langacker as “apprehension of other minds” (Langacker 2007).

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Published

2019-04-16

How to Cite

Kędra-Kardela, A. (2019). A Cognitive Poetic Approach to Paratext: Horace Walpole’s Prefaces to The Castle of Otranto. A Gothic Story: -. Zagadnienia Rodzajów Literackich The Problems of Literary Genres, 61(4), 55–70. https://doi.org/10.26485/ZRL/2018/61.4/4

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Section

Articles