Thesis advisor: Alan Richardson / The purpose of this project is to examine how text and image function cognitively in the graphic narrative paying particular attention to its manifestation in Satrapi’s "Persepolis." The structure is such that each chapter will progressively become more specific, from medium to genre to text, drawing on specific examples from Persepolis for support. Chapter 2 will first categorize the various relationships between text and image as they function in the graphic narrative as a medium. They are described in terms of the reader’s cognitive experience of the verbal narrative line’s juxtaposition against the visual narrative line. Chapter 3 will examine how a multimodal narrative—a dual verbal/visual narrative—affects the genre of nonfiction in the graphic narrative medium. It will define not only the tensions that text and image necessarily bring to the authenticity of nonfiction, but also the benefits. Chapter 4 will focus on Persepolis as a cognitive product in its own right. Stemming from theories of autobiography which suggest that an autobiographic text is a self-construction or self-understanding of identity, one can examine Persepolis as a material product and personal construction through this lens. I offer a cognitive approach which suggests that Persepolis functions as a material anchor of a conceptual blend—cognitive theories developed by Mark Turner, Gilles Fauconnier, and Edward Hutchins which are further explained in Chapters 2 and 4. While the primary goal of this project is specific to the research goals explained above, the secondary goal is advocacy. Both cognitive literary theory and comics criticism are marginalized in current literary studies. The former—whose scientific method looms over literature—threatens to overshadow the beauty and philosophy behind prose and poetry, while the latter—as a product of mass consumption and popular culture—threatens to undermine the legitimacy of literature. However, this project will show the viability of both cognitive literary theory as a method and the graphic narrative as a subject for serious academic inquiry. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: English Honors Program. / Discipline: English.

This dissertation examines the intersection between theories of body and of genre through the lens of cognitive science. It focuses, in particular, on representations of bodies in exemplars of fabliaux in Old French and Middle English, chivalric romance that feature the figure of Sir Gawain, and the Latin Chronicle of Bury St Edmunds. This dissertation establishes genre theory on cognitive-scientific ground by considering how embodied cognition influences both theories of genre and the representations of bodies. It argues that, rather than a container into which works fit, genre is a network of associations created in the minds of authors and audiences. This network finds expression in the bodies of characters, which differ across genres. It argues, moreover, that genre and bodies influence, in fundamental ways, interpretations of literary works. Finally, this work discusses the possibilities for future research using methods for quantitative textual analysis and data visualization common in the digital humanities. / text

This thesis explores representations of fictional consciousness (the fictional mind) in the novel The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Casares Bioy through the lens of cognitive approaches to literature. I first argue that the ways in which we interact with fictional minds is not unlike the way that we interact with real minds. Utilizing a cognitive hermeneutic means laying bare some of the cognitive frames and processes which are embedded into fictional worlds. I then argue that consciousness itself is narratively structured. Conscious experience is gappy and lies atop an enormous, largely unconscious realm of cognitive processing. This thesis seeks to uncover some of these processes as represented in the fictional mind, arguing that representations of fictional consciousness are composed of internal narratives (like mental events, wishes, desires, etc.) mirroring the narrative structure of real consciousness. Finally, I argue that representations of consciousness are embodied and can be read in tandem with the fictional world in which they are situated. The feedback loop between the fictional mind and its fictional environment, both physical and sociocultural, is the starting point for a powerful, interdisciplinary reading methodology. / Thesis / Master of English

ix, 203 p. : ill. / As critic Jonathan Gottschall notes, "The literary scholar's subject is ultimately the human mind - the mind that is the creator, subject, and auditor of literary works." The primary aim of this dissertation is to use modern cognitive science to better understand the early modern mind. I apply a framework rooted in cognitive science--the interdisciplinary study of how the human brain generates first-person consciousness and relates to external objects through that conscious framework--to reveal the role of consciousness and memory in subject formation and creative interpretation, as represented in period drama. Cognitive science enables us as scholars and critics to read literature of the period through a lens that reveals subjects in the process of being formed prior to the "self-fashioning" processes of enculturation and social discipline that have been so thoroughly diagnosed in criticism in recent decades. I begin with an overview of the field of cognitive literary theory, demonstrating that cognitive science has already begun to offer scholars of the period a vital framework for understanding literature as the result of unique minds grappling with uniquely historical problems, both biologically and socially. From there, I proceed to detailed explications of neuroscience-based theories of the relationship between the embodied brain, memory, and subject identity, via detailed close reading case studies. In the primary chapters, I focus on what I consider to be three primary elements of embodied subjectivity in drama of the period: basic identity reification through unique first-person memory (the Tudor interlude Jake Juggler ), more complex subject-object relationships leading to alterations in behavioral modes (Hamlet ), and finally, the blending of literary structures and social context in the interpretation of subject behavior (Middleton's A Trick to Catch the Old One ). / Committee in charge: Lisa Freinkel, Chairperson; George Rowe, Member; Ben Saunders, Member; Lara Bovilsky, Member; Ted Toadvine, Outside Member