View article

Approaches to narrative study that fall under the heading of cognitive narratology share a focus on the mental states, capacities, and dispositions that provide grounds for—or, conversely, are grounded in—narrative experiences. This definition highlights two broad questions as centrally relevant for research on the nexus of narrative and mind:(1) How do stories across media interlock with interpreters’ mental states and processes, thus giving rise to narrative experiences?;(2) How (to what extent, in what specific ways) does narrative scaffold efforts to make sense of experience itself? The first question bears on stories viewed as a target of interpretation; it concerns ways in which interpreters use various kinds of semiotic affordances to engage with narrative worlds (or “storyworlds”). The second question concerns how narrative constitutes a resource for interpretation, providing a basis for understanding and …