Cognitive Poetics and the relevance of authorial intention in the creation, communication and interpretation of meaning

Abstract This thesis examines the processes of meaning-making by writers and readers from a cognitive poetic perspective. It does this by comparing cognitive poetic methodology with naturalistic data gathered from poets and writers by means of questionnaires and commentaries. Six poets provide data about their working practices and intentions, while two provide further commentaries, on four each of their poems. Finally, 21 readers respond to these poems and their feedback is compared with the poets’ declarations of intended meaning and effect. The central aims of the thesis are to provide empirical evidence of the practices both of working poets and ordinary readers when creating and interpreting poetry – in this case autobiographical lyrical poetry on the topic of loss and grief - and to examine the evidence of the impact of authorial intention and reader experiences both on the creation of these works and on their interpretation. As a result of the analysis of this data, this thesis proposes that the current paucity within cognitive poetic criticism of reference to writers’ intentions and to the empirically evidenced responses of ‘real’ readers to poetic texts, whether deliberate or by omission, diminishes the capacity of these critical approaches fully to theorise how meaning is created, communicated and interpreted. In particular this thesis suggests that the importance of authorial intention, including the need more fully to conceptualise this in analyses of poets’ work, is currently under-acknowledged, and that this omission weakens cognitive poetic practice in this area. This research aims mainly to be a contribution to the fields of cognitive poetics and stylistics. It approaches this theoretically through drawing attention to the role of the author in the creating of meaning and effect for examining how meaning and effect are created, analytically through the discussion of the research poems and methodologically through the utilisation of data from poets and readers to inform the conclusions. This is a study of work from, and responses to, a very specific genre of poetry, and the conclusions invite a range of areas for further study.