Text world theory and the emotional experience of literary discourse.

This thesis investigates the emotional experience of literary discourse from a cognitivepoetic
perspective. In doing so, it combines detailed Text World Theory analysis with an
examination of naturalistic reader response data in the form of book group discussions and
internet postings. Three novels by contemporary author Kazuo Ishiguro form the analytical
focus of this investigation: The Remains of the Dt!)' (1989), The Unconso/ed (1995) and Never Let
Me Go (2005), chosen due to their thematic engagement with emotion and their ability to
evoke emotion in readers. The central aims of this thesis are to develop cognitive-poetic
understanding of the emotional experience of literature, and to advance cognitive-poetic
and literary-critical understanding of the works of Ishiguro.
As a result of the analytical investigations of the three novels, this thesis proposes
several enhancements to the discourse-world level of the Text World Theory framework.
In particular, this thesis argues for a more detailed and nuanced account of deictic
projection and identification, proposes a means of including readers' hopes and preferences
in text-world analyses, and reconceptualises processes of knowledge activation as inherently
emotional. Detailed, cognitive-poetic analyses of Ishiguro's novels elucidate literary-critical
observations regarding Ishiguro's shifting style, and present new insights into the cognitive
and emotional aspects of the interaction between the texts and their readers.
This thesis aims primarily to be a contribution to the fields of stylistics and
cognitive poetics. It approaches this theoretically through the application and enhancement
of cognitive poetic frameworks, analytically through the investigation of Ishiguro, and
methodologically through the utilisation of reader response data in order to direct and
support the investigations. However, incidental contributions are also made to cognitive
and social emotion theories, and the discussion raises several suggestions for continued
interdisciplinary research in the future.