Playing By Ear And The Tip Of The Tongue: Precategorial Information In Poetry (linguistic Approaches To Literature)

In our everyday life we are flooded by a pandemonium of information which consciousness organizes into more easily manageable phonetic and semantic categories. In poetry reading, however, the total effect of a poem is not only obtained by some of these categories but also by precategorial information, for which there is a growing body of empirical evidence of its psychological reality. In the Tip of the Tongue phenomenon, a great amount of diffuse precategorial information is present but fails to “grow together” into a compact word, generating a feeling of some dense, undifferentiated mass. Poetic language typically exploits such precategorial information for its effects. By way of theoretical considerations and close readings, this book explores the semantic and phonetic strategies by which a text may increase or decrease the impact of such information. It investigates the conditions that boost or inhibit overtone fusion in rhyme and alliteration. By seeking empirical evidence for the claims he makes in different fields such as music, art, literature, linguistics, experiments in the speech laboratory, the author provides ample and sound examples (ambiguity intended) in an almost conversational tone, which makes us really anticipate reading each new chapter. Playing by Ear and the Tip of the Tongue Editorial page Title page LCC data Supported by Table of contents Preface Introduction 1.1 Precategorial information and critical communication 1.2 “Speech mode”, “Nonspeech mode”, “Poetic mode” 1.3 Thing destruction and thing-free qualities 1.4 “The Roses of her Cheeks” 1.5 Perceptual boundaries and fusion 1.6 “Precategorial” – predecessors and successors 1.7 Guide through this book The poetic mode of speech perception revisited 2.1 Stating the problem 2.2 Some experimental evidence 2.3 Speech mode, nonspeech mode and poetic mode 2.4 Colour and overtone interaction 2.5 Individual differences 2.6 Summary and conclusions The tot phenomenon 3.1 The tot phenomenon 3.2 Referentiality, serial position, and the “God-gifted organ-voice of England” 3.3 Summary and conclusions “Oceanic” dedifferentiation and poetic metaphor 4.1 Rapid vs. delayed conceptualization 4.2 Poetic metaphors 4.3 Oceanic Imagery in Faust 4.4 Conclusions Deixis and abstractions 5.1 Sequential and spatial processing 5.2 Time in poetry 5.3 More on the abstract of the concrete 5.4 “Total Complexes” and “Just Noticeable Differences” 5.5 Feeling and knowing 5.6 Conclusion Chapter 6. Three case studies – keats, spenser, baudelaire 6.1 Poetry and Altered States of Consciousness 6.2 “On See­ing the Elgin Marbles” 6.3 Alternative Men­tal Performances 6.4 Symbol and Allegory 6.5 Keats and Marlowe 6.6 Ambiguity and Soft Focus 6.7 Chearlesse Night in Spenser and Baudelaire 6.8 To Sum Up Linguistic devices and ecstatic poetry 7.1 Ecstatic quality, linguistic devices, and cognitive processes 7.2 Vocal performance and lingering precategorial auditory information Defamiliarization Revisited Aesthetic qualities as structural resemblance 9.1 Emotional qualities and onomatopoeia 9.2 Convergent and divergent style 9.3 Perceptual forces (large scale) 9.4 Perceptual forces (minute scale) 9.5 Materials and structures Appendix Observations on Larsen’s criticism of the click experiment Metaphor and figure – ground relationship 10.1 Basic gestalt rules of figure – ground 10.2 Figure and ground in the visual arts 10.3 Form in other senses 10.4 Figures in narrative 10.5 Figure and ground (?) in poetry: Emily Dickinson 10.6 Figure and ground (?) in Shakespeare 10.7 Figure–ground reversal in music: “Moonlight” Sonata 10.8 Literature: Figure–ground reversals of the extralinguistic 10.9 Summary and wider perspectives Size–sound symbolism revisited 11.1 Preliminary 11.2 Phlogiston and precategorial information 11.3 Sound symbolism and source’s size 11.3.1 Sound symbolism and referent’s size 11.4 Descriptive reduplication in Japanese 11.5 Methodological comments Issues in literary synaesthesia 12.1 Synaesthesia as a neuropsychological and a literary phenomenon 12.2 Four kinds of explanation 12.3 Panchronistic tendencies in synaesthesia 12.4 Aesthetic qualities: Witty and emotional 12.5 Overriding downward transfers 12.6 Synaesthesia and ecstatic quality: Two French sonnets 12.6.1 To sum up The place of nonconceptual information in university education 13.1 Logic of What? 13.2 Rapid and Delayed Categorization 13.3 Sensuous Metaphors and the Grotesque 13.4 Summary and Conclusions Points and counterpoints 14.1 Persinger’s findings and poetry criticism 14.2 “Dover Beach” – two cognitive readings 14.3 Speculative vs. empirical 14.4 “The Sound of Meaning” 14.5 Coding strategy and storage time 14.6 On interpretation 14.7 On major/ minor keys 14.8 The split brain and poetic qualities 14.9 To conclude References Index