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A Cognitive Approach
to Ernest Hemingway’s
Short Fiction
A Cognitive Approach
to Ernest Hemingway’s
Short Fiction
By
Gabriela Tucan
A Cognitive Approach to Ernest Hemingway's Short Fiction
By Gabriela Tucan
This book first published 2021
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2021 by Gabriela Tucan
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-5275-6762-1

ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-6762-7
In loving memory of my mother.
“In the study of the mind, whatever looks natural
is most suspect”
(The Literary Mind, Mark Turner)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements .................................................................................... x
Introduction ................................................................................................ 1
Chapter One .............................................................................................. 16

Cognitive Sciences Come Together
1.1 Mind, body, and cognition ............................................................ 16
1.2 The turn to embodied cognition .................................................... 29
1.3 Windows to the mind: the theory of conceptual blending............. 33
1.4 Mappings in thought and language: the theory of mental space ... 40
1.5 Contexts, constructions, and inferences: frame semantics ............ 45
1.6 Mapping the mind: domains and the theory of domains ............... 48
1.7 Space, movement, embodiment: the meanings of the body .......... 49
1.8 Metaphorical thinking: its conceptual force and further
implications ................................................................................... 53
1.9 Metonymic thought: a cognitive approach .................................... 59
Chapter Two ............................................................................................. 63

What the Mind has to do with Literary Texts. Cognitively Oriented
Literary Studies
2.1 General overview .......................................................................... 63
2.2 Reading in the cognitive age ......................................................... 69
2.3 Cognitive poetics as the new interdisciplinary venture ................. 76
2.4 A cognitive inquiry into narrative: toward a cognitive
narratology .................................................................................... 80
2.5 Cognitive poetics and cognitive narratology: gains and gaps ....... 90
Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 94

Ernest Hemingway’s Short Stories: Cognitive Features and the Reader’s
Mind
3.1 On defining short storyness........................................................... 94
3.2 The autonomy of short fiction: intrinsic nature and distinctive
features ........................................................................................ 100
3.3 Short stories: creative tools for thinking ..................................... 107
viii Table of Contents
3.4 Short stories and counterfactual thinking: an introduction ......... 109

3.5 Practical argument: Hemingway’s style and artistic technique... 112
3.6 Ernest Hemingway: exercises of artistic style............................. 115
3.7 The definition and nature of the Hemingway short story:
a close-up .................................................................................... 119
Chapter Four ........................................................................................... 125

Narrative Space, Possible Worlds and Counterfactuality in Ernest
Hemingway’s Short Stories
4.1 Image-schematic knowledge and immersive features of short
stories .......................................................................................... 125
4.2 Time as a forking path. Metaphorical spatializations of time ..... 141
4.2.1 Fathers and Sons ................................................................ 150
4.2.2 A Canary for One ............................................................... 154
4.2.3 Hills like White Elephants .................................................. 156
4.2.4 The End of Something......................................................... 159
4.3 The theory of possible worlds. Private embedded narratives ...... 163
4.4 Living in the best possible world: The Gambler, the Nun,
and the Radio, Now I Lay Me, and A Way You’ll Never Be ........ 167
4.5 Self-construal and identity. Preliminary concluding remarks ..... 175
4.6 The world as it might have been: counterfactuals in Wine of
Wyoming, The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife, and The Three-
Day Blow ..................................................................................... 177
Chapter Five ........................................................................................... 192

Fictional Minds, Mental Spaces, and their Couterfactual Capacities
5.1 Hemingway reconsidered............................................................ 192
5.2. Emergence of fictional minds .................................................... 197
5.3 Fictional thought in behavioral and transitional narratives:
The Killers, Out of Season, and Up in Michigan ......................... 203
5.3.1 The Killers .......................................................................... 203
5.3.2 Out of Season ..................................................................... 208
5.3.3 Up in Michigan................................................................... 216
5.4 Blending and the study of narrative ............................................ 222
5.5. Double-scope identity blends: blending and de-blending the
counterfactual self. Big Two-Hearted River, The Sea Change, Cat
in the Rain, and Soldier’s Home .................................................. 230
5.5.1 Big Two-Hearted River ...................................................... 234
5.5.2 The Sea Change .................................................................. 237
5.5.3 Cat in the Rain.................................................................... 241
5.5.4 Soldier’s Home ................................................................... 245
A Cognitive Approach to Ernest Hemingway’s Short Fiction ix
5.6 Compression of vital relations: A Very Short Story .................... 251
Conclusions ............................................................................................ 256
Bibliography ........................................................................................... 268

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Over the past several years, I have taught a course in communication

strategies in short fiction and another in twentieth-century American
literature at the West University of Timi‫܈‬oara, Romania. I have been
extremely fortunate in the intelligence and acute sense of observation that
my students have brought to these classes. I wish to thank them for their
countless observations, lively critical comments, and enthusiasm that have
contributed to the development of my research trajectory and helped me to
formulate the ideas of this book. A debt of gratitude is owed to my friends
and colleagues at the West University, in particular the literature specialists
Cristina Chevere‫܈‬an and Ana Cristina Băniceru, who were generous and
especially supportive in their remarks when the book was in its thesis phase.
Special thanks go to my friend Diana Nacu, who read a late version of the
manuscript and gave brilliant suggestions that immensely improved my
work. I can only express my gratitude to professor Mircea Mihăie‫ ܈‬for his
encouragement and support through the years. My further research was
aided by the postdoctoral school of the West University that generously
funded a month of research in Venice, Italy, at Ca’ Foscari University. The
libraries there were an invaluable resource for this study. This book has also
benefited immeasurably from the debates at conferences in the arts and the
humanities in Mainz, Baltimore, Venice, Budapest, and elsewhere. I am also
indebted to the proofreader of the book, Alex Monaghan, for his helpful
comments and the editor, Adam Rummens, for his great attention to this
work. Finally, I owe my engagement with cognitive science and short
fiction to my husband, Dumitru, who began reading in the field to show his
tireless support of this project. I thank him for his intellectual comradeship
and especially for his trust and great patience in assisting me with the
publication of the manuscript.
INTRODUCTION
It is something of a commonplace today that natural scientists are only able

to judge their work in isolation while humanities research is intended to be
understood only by specialists working in their respective academic fields.
It is a matter of some debate whether work by practitioners in differing
disciplinary areas is expected to remain invisible and intellectually
uninteresting for their counterparts. In place of this traditionally sharp
division between humanities and natural sciences, the past decades have
seen a growing interest in the enriching cross-fertilization between scientific
approaches and humanistic investigations. This scientific turn in the study
of literature outlines a new paradigm founded on rigorous and reliable
knowledge, on methodological discipline and theoretical assumptions.
Research in the new field known as the empirical study of literature
flourished with the pioneering work published in the Scientific Study of
Literature, a journal launched in 2010. Defined as a repertoire of cultural
artifacts, literature is studied here with scientific stringency to cast new light
on literary phenomena and processes. This cutting-edge journal has helped
revitalize the declining state of core humanist concerns by welcoming
contributions that use scientific methods to explore and validate new
hypotheses. One of the most important lines of inquiry in the Scientific Study
of Literature is that texts are not universal repositories of meaning but “fluid
objects that are created in the minds of readers.”1 This shifts the focus on
the investigation of the interaction between reader and text.
In 2012, Van Peer et al. edited the volume Scientific Methods for the
Humanities,2 which provides a repository of methods and approaches to
further promote empirical research in humanities. They argue that the
realms of science and humanist disciplines are not divided by an
unbridgeable chasm and that the relation between them is complementary
rather than one of opposition. What brings them together is their shared
concern with questions of how to ascribe meaning to one’s life. They hold
that such queries have always had a predominant role in culture and so
1 Peter Dixon and Marisa Bortolussi, “The Scientific Study of Literature: What Can,
Has, and Should be Done,” Scientific Study of Literature 1, no. 1 (2011): 59–71.
2 Wille Van Peer, Frank Hakemulder and Sonia Zyngier, eds., Scientific Methods for
the Humanities (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2012).

2 Introduction
abolishing them would mean disregarding meaningful cultural phenomena.

In their words, reflections on how one grasps meaning show that “we are
human and humane, that we maintain a relationship with our surroundings,
that we mean something to ourselves and to others.”1 The point is taken
further in an argument that stresses that questions involved in meaning
processes need to be confronted with “the very best methods we have at our
disposal” while relying on a scientific repertoire of methods. In fact, what
they propose is consistent with the multifaceted investigation conducted in
the Scientific Study of Literature: cross-disciplinary dialog and tight
collaboration between natural sciences and humanities are premised on the
realization that they both need each other so as to know the world better.
Scientific Methods for the Humanities reminds us of C. P. Snow’s high
aspiration for bridging the two cultures into a “Third Culture”2 to narrow
the cultural divide. The collaborative ties he advertized in 1959 are still
disputed today. For instance, the dichotomy between sciences and arts are
at the core of Jonathan Gottshall’s publications on the matter.3 In Literature,
Science, and a New Humanities, he identifies the origin of the crisis: the
failure of literary scholars to produce reliable knowledge, which sets them
apart from scientists who operate on theoretically robust assumptions. In
stark contrast to scientific inquiry, literary studies pose vital questions in a
space of explanation that is too vast. The key to obtaining more reliable
results is a systematic “shrinking down” of this broad space of possibility.
Gottshall gives the example of science understood as “the most successful
method humans have devised for shrinking the space of possible
explanation. The work is carried forward by research communities whose
members typically focus on little parts of big problems. Through their
competitive, cooperative, and cumulative efforts, scientific research
communities seek to narrow the range of plausible response to given
questions. Sometimes this process is spectacularly successful and
possibility space is reduced to a speck.”4 In a similar vein, narrowing down
the possibility space in literary studies would enable us to test ideas
rigorously. Gottshall hopes that advances in humanities will result from
emulating techniques, methods, and theories from allied domains.
1 Van Peer, Hakemulder and Zyngieret al., Scientific Methods for the Humanities, 6.
2 His thesis was published in The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1959).

3 Jonathan Gottshall, Literature, Science, and a New Humanities (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
4 Gottshall, Literature, Science, and a New Humanities, 8.
A Cognitive Approach to Ernest Hemingway’s Short Fiction 3
Other seminal work in interdisciplinarity has been done by Slingerland.1

In his study analyzing what science offers the humanities, he explains that
the historically entrenched divide between academic departments originates
in the rather old-fashioned metaphysical mind-body dualism. This universal
intuition maintains that there are two types of substances in the world: mind
and matter. They operate independently and according to their distinct
principles. This dualistic model is replicated in the academic debate:
humanists study the mind to grasp its mysterious inner workings whilst
scientists concern themselves with the properties of matter. The distinction
between understanding and explanation has thus become the hallmark of a
divided academic world. However, Slingerland’s non-dualistic concept
argues for “an integrated, ‘embodied’ approach to the study of human
culture.”2 Why does this merit attention? This guiding principle of “an
embodied cognition,” embraced by research3 in the interdisciplinary matrix
called cognitive sciences, means that all cognitive innovation is constrained
by the structure of our bodies and minds. Our unique physical and cognitive
architecture and the way we experience the world are fundamental
conditions for calling into question the classical mind-body dualism. In
Slingerland’s words: “By breaching the mind-body divide—by bringing the
human mind back into contact with a rich and meaningful world of things—
this approach to the humanities starts from an embodied mind that is always
in touch with the world, as well as a pragmatic model of truth or verification
that takes the body and the physical world seriously.”4
Cognitively-informed sciences welcome the embodied mind approach,
which indeed forms the fundament of their scientific practice. In this sense,
psychologists5 and scholars who study perception6 argue that the mental
1 Edward Slingerland, What Science Offers the Humanities. Integrating Body and
Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
2 Slingerland, What Science Offers the Humanities, 9.
3 Raymond W. Gibbs Jr., Embodiment and Cognitive Science (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005). See also: Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson
and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993 [1991]); Mark Johnson, The Body in the Mind:
The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason (Chicago/London:
University of Chicago Press, 1987).
4 Slingerland, What Science Offers the Humanities, 8.
5 Ulric Neisser, Cognitive Psychology (New York: Psychology Press, 2014). See
also: Ulric Neisser, Cognition and Reality: Principles and Implications of Cognitive
Psychology (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1976).
6 Diane Pecher and Rolf Zwaan, eds., Grounding Cognition: The Role of Perception
and Action in Memory, Language and Thinking (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2005); Alva Noë, Action in Perception (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004).
4 Introduction
representation of the external world arises from everyday embodied

experiences and from a sensory contact with the world. This leads to the
conclusion that cognition is “embodied action.” Varela et al. explain the
term “embodied” by arguing that “cognition depends upon the kinds of
experience that come from having a body with various sensorimotor
capacities,” which are themselves “embedded in a more encompassing
biological, psychological, and cultural context.”1 The term “action” emphasizes
that “sensory and motor processes, perception and action, are fundamentally
inseparable in lived cognition.”2 Overall, current empirical evidence
presents an embodied picture of cognition. This view shows that perception
does not only occur in the sensory apparatus but is a kinesthetic activity that
is able to transform mental images.3
Concerned with an empirical investigation of the mind, artificial
intelligence4 (AI) provides evidence against the dualist thesis, suggesting
that consciousness is not a mysterious substance but rather a property
emerging from matter. The machines built by AI, capable of replicating the
mind’s physical complexities, strengthen the argument in favor of the
physicalist view of consciousness. Similarly, cognitive linguistics5 focuses
on deep cognitive processes to show how understanding and creativity arise
from an embodied human experience. Language does not emerge from
See also: James J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (New
York: Psychology Press, 1986).
1 Varela, Thompson and Rosch, Embodied Mind, 173.
2 Varela, Thompson and Rosch, Embodied Mind, 173.
3 Gibbs, Embodiment and Cognitive Science.
4 Dana Ballard, “On the Function of Visual Representation,” in Vision and Mind:
Selected Readings in the Philosophy of Perception, eds. Alva Noë and Evan
Thompson (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 2002), 459–479. See also: Dana Ballard,
“Animate vision,” Artificial Intelligence 48 (1991): 57–86; Rodney Brooks,
“Intelligence without Representation,” Artificial Intelligence 47 (1991): 139–159.
5 Gibbs, Embodiment and Cognitive Science. See also: Vittorio Gallese and George
Lakoff, “The Brain’s Concepts: The Role of the Sensory-motor System in

Conceptual Knowledge,” Cognitive Neuropsychology 22 (2005): 455–479; George
Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago/London: University of
Chicago Press, 2003 [1980]); Leonard Talmy, Toward a Cognitive Semantics, 2
vols. (Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press/Bradford, 2000); Ronald Langacker,
Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Volume 2: Descriptive Application (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1991); Ronald W. Langacker, Foundations of Cognitive
Grammar. Volume 1: Theoretical Prerequisites (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1987); Eve Sweetser, From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and
Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990).
autonomous parts of the brain but from bodily experience.1 Cognitive

linguistics has seen a growing body of evidence claiming that syntactic
systems cannot work independently from semantics, while both of them are
informed by basic sensorimotor activities. In a helpful survey study,
Wilson2 identifies the major tenets held by linguists: cognition is dynamic,
context-dependent, situated, designed for action, and constructed on
experience. It is deeply entrenched in the restraints of the body and reflected
in the surrounding environment.
There is a common thread that runs through most of the body and
practices of research in the affiliated disciplines discussed above that argues
that cognitive activity emerges from interactions between the brain, body,
and environment. This present volume explores the question of how an
engagement with cognitive sciences can change the ways we study
literature. How has literary endeavor—an exploration of the powers of
imagination, if nothing else—come to be indebted to the rational faculties
of cognitive sciences? Is it worthwhile, and perhaps even necessary, to
consider the importance and sheer size of the body of the research on mind
and brain processes? Might their empirical investigations breathe new life
into the intellectual environment of the traditional tenets of literary studies?
Turner3 saw this trend almost thirty years ago, arguing then that cognitive
science “requires” the study of literature as a vital product of the human
mind, constituted via complex processes of comprehension and production.
Since Turner’s discovery, many others4 have turned to the cognitive
study of literature. However, “resistance to unified theories” still informs
literary cognitive work, as Zunshine notes in her introductory chapter5 to
Cognitive Literary Studies. Despite general interest in establishing a common
1 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh. The Embodied Mind
and its Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1999).
2 Margaret Wilson, “Six Views of Embodied Cognition,” Psychonomic Bulletin and
Review 9 (2002): 625–636.

3 Mark Turner, Reading Minds: The Study of English in the Age of Cognitive Science
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991).

4 Michael Burke and Emily T. Troscianko, eds., Cognitive Literary Science.
Dialogues between Literature and Cognition (New York: Oxford University Press,
2017); Peter Garratt, ed., The Cognitive Humanities. Embodied Mind in Literature
and Culture (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016); Lisa Zunshine, ed., The Oxford
Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015);
Patrick Colm Hogan, Cognitive Science, Literature, and the Arts. A Guide for
Humanists (New York/London: Routledge, 2003); Mary Thomas Crane, Shakespeare’s
Brain. Reading with Cognitive Theory (Princeton, NJ/Oxford: Princeton University
Press, 2001); Jerry R. Hobbs, Literature and Cognition (Stanford, CA: CSLI, 1990).
5 Zunshine, Cognitive Literary Studies.
6 Introduction
research background, even scholars1 attracted by interdisciplinary work

often remain critical. Ryan criticizes the fact that the work of literary
theorists engaged with heterogeneous methodology creates the impression
of “interdisciplinary bricolage.”2 In order to counterbalance criticism, Hartner
holds that “cognitive literary studies therefore need to engage in a continued
reflection on their concepts, aims, and methods” while the intersection
between science and literature demands “a heightened degree of
epistemological awareness and conceptual deliberation.”3 In this spirit,
numerous studies engage in sound theoretical reflections on the scope of
cognitive approaches. Schneider and Hartner,4 for example, eloquently
advocate the literary implications of Fauconnier and Turner’s blending
theory. In Why We Read Fiction, Zunshine5 conducts a rigorous examination
of the theory of mind, and in Social Minds in the Novel, Palmer6 designs
analytical tools to investigate “social minds” in action. Spolsky7 examines
the mind’s instability arising from cognitive gaps that enables innovation in
fictional writing and literary criticism. Richardson8 uses concepts and recent
findings from neuroscience to better understand the relations between
literary activity and brain science in the Romantic era in Britain. The
collection of forty articles edited by Kreutz and MacNealy,9 mostly indebted
to cognitive psychology, demonstrates how literary effects can be described
by means of empirical methods. In the more recent and wide-ranging
1 Marie-Laure Ryan, “Narratology and Cognitive Science: A Problematic Relation,”

Style 44, no. 4 (2010): 469–495; Patricia Waugh, “Introduction: Criticism, Theory,
and Anti-theory,” in Literary Theory and Criticism: An Oxford Guide, ed. Patricia
Waugh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 1–33.
2 Ryan, “Narratology and Cognitive Science,” 476.
3 Marcus Hartner, “Scientific Concepts in Literary Studies. Towards Criteria for the
Meeting of Literature and Cognitive Science,” in Cognitive Literary Science.

Dialogues between Literature and Cognition, ed. Michael Burke and Emily T.
Troscianko (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 22.
4 Ralf Schneider and Marcus Hartner, eds., Blending and the Study of Narrative:
Approaches and Applications (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2012).

5 Lisa Zunshine, Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel (Columbus,
OH: Ohio State University Press, 2006).

6 Alan Palmer, Social Minds in the Novel (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University
Press, 2010).
7 Ellen Spolsky, Gaps in Nature: Literary Interpretation and the Modular Mind
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993).

8 Alan Richardson, British Romanticism and the Science of the Mind (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001).

9 Roger J. Kreuz and Mary Sue MacNealy, eds., Empirical Approaches to Literature
and Aesthetics (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1996).

volume coordinated by Zunshine,1 the common thread is the contributors’

commitment to a variety of theoretical paradigms. They are open to
unexpected approaches, perceived as irrelevant to cognitive inquiry a
decade ago. For instance, cognitive disability studies spearheaded by Ralph
James Savarese radically revises our view of autism2 as a debilitating
condition known to prevent autists from comprehending figurative
language. He demonstrates instead that they possess enormous sensitivity
to poetic expression. This type of research shows how literature is able to
offer benefits back to cognitive science and contribute to cognitive-scientific
debates. The ground-breaking research in cognitive postcolonial studies3 and
cognitive queer studies4 opens other new theoretical perspectives and offers
new models for literary studies.
Yet in the process of exploring the vast volume of research that treats
the goals of literary, linguistic, and cognitive studies as possibly overlapping
or even shared, I aim to apply the advances of cognitive poetics5 to literary
reading. Freeman6 contends that this new field in literary analysis focuses
on general cognitive processes of comprehension. This enables us to
discover mental operations happening below the level of conscious
awareness. Stockwell emphasizes that such natural phenomena do not
appear when one engages in acts of interpretation but rather both in
individual readings and in those shared by a group or a community:
1 Zunshine, Cognitive Literary Studies.

2 Ralph James Savarese, “What Some Autistics Can Teach Us about Poetry. A
Neurocosmopolitan Approach,” in The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary
Studies, ed. Lisa Zunshine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 394–417.
3 Patrick Colm Hogan, “The Psychology of Colonialism and Postcolonialism.
Cognitive Approaches to Identity and Empathy,” in The Oxford Handbook of

Cognitive Literary Studies, ed. Lisa Zunshine (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2015), 329–346; Suzanne Keen, “Human Rights Discourse and Universals of
Cognition and Emotion. Postcolonial Fiction,” in The Oxford Handbook of
Cognitive Literary Studies, ed. Lisa Zunshine (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2015), 347–365.
4 Keith J. Vincent, “Sex on the Mind: Queer Theory Meets Cognitive Theory,” in
The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies, ed. Lisa Zunshine (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2015), 199–221.
5 Joanna Gavins and Gerard Steen, eds., Cognitive Poetics in Practice (London/New
York: Routledge, 2003). See also: Peter Stockwell, Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction
(London: Routledge, 2002); Elena Semino and Jonathan Culpeper, Cognitive
Stylistics. Language and Cognition in Text Analysis (Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John
Benjamins, 2002).
6 Margaret H. Freeman, “Cognitive Mapping in Literary Analysis,” Style 36, no. 3
(2002): 466–483.
8 Introduction
“cognitive poetics offers a means of discussing interpretation whether it is

an authorly version of the world or a readerly account, and how those
interpretations are made manifest in textuality. In this sense, cognitive
poetics is not simply a shift in emphasis but is a radical re-evaluation of the
whole process of literary activity.”1 Literary theorists are therefore able to
explain readings with reference to general cognitive processes and linguistic
dimensions. Viewed as a form of everyday experience, literature can be
understood on the basis of our knowledge of the world that arises from our
embodied interaction with our surroundings. This is also one of the basic
tenets of cognitive linguists, who “assume a close connection between
experience, cognition, and language,” as Gavins and Steen explain.2 While
cognitive poetics receives cognitive input through linguistics, it is also
connected to other research branches, in particular psychology and
psycholinguistics.
Since a cognitive poetic analysis offers the opportunity to dive into a
detailed awareness of otherwise barely noticeable mental processes, I
believe it has advantages when rethinking the reception of short fiction.
Before I explain why I have chosen Ernest Hemingway’s modernist short
stories for analysis, I first need to clarify why I focus on short fiction. I argue
that short stories can best be used for explanatory purposes in cognitive
poetics. They provide good illustrations of cognitive operations required for
building mental representations. How readers are able to arrive at perceived
meanings is still largely a mystery and a matter of pure speculation in short
story theory. The narrative mystery is even seen as a generic factor, which
led Eudora Welty3 to conclude that “every good story has mystery—not the
puzzle kind, but the mystery of allurement. As we understand the story
better, it is likely that the mystery does not necessarily decrease; rather it
simply grows more beautiful.” In his approach to the modernist short story,
Head4 explains that critics have taken refuge in theories of mystery and
uncertainty for lack of a better critical approach to deal with ambiguity,
paradox, and ellipsis, three fundamental properties of the modernist short
story. He goes on to argue that these prevailing features generate a great
deal of disunifying effects, contrary to the esthetic unity that critics
generally seek to attain. His thesis focuses on “the cultivated disunity of the
modernist story,” rarely observed in discussions of short fiction. He points
1 Stockwell, Cognitive Poetics, 5.

2 Gavins and Steen, Cognitive Poetics in Practice, 9.
3 Eudora Welty, “The Reading and Writing of Short Stories,” Atlantic Monthly 183
(1949): 46–49.
4 Dominic Head, The Modernist Short Story. A Study in Theory and Practice
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

out that this approach “should lead us away from the search for a unifying
authorial presence, and towards a focus on the historical gaps and conflicts
in a text, […] [which] inevitably result in an uneven textual surface.”1 Even
though such formal disruptions are often recognized, existing short story
theories have not discussed them adequately. In line with Head’s argument,
I stress that a rigorous language is required to theorize the hidden parts of
the short text. Basically, this involves intense acts of imagination on the
reader’s part. They need to transcend intentional absences, cope with
fragmentary messages, and compact brevity. All of this means that readers
are affected subliminally while their imaginative powers and cognitive
abilities are stretched to their limits. It follows, therefore, that the problem
of gaps and silences in the story should not be deemed as “mysterious” but
accounted for by means of a new esthetic theory. This premise is tested in
this book. The chapters that follow are a practical investigation of cognitive
poetic principles demonstrated in the work of Ernest Hemingway. His short
stories serve as an extended example to substantiate my argument. In fact, I
have selected him as my subject because critics have never ceased to offer
him attention. Starting with Philip Young’s initial studies2 up until the
1980s, critics offered readers the image of a hypermasculine writer. That
was a relatively stable critical filter that stressed his uncompromised
masculinity and his code of heroes. However, in the late ‘70s, Fetterley3
condemned the masculine comportment in Hemingway’s texts as homophobic
and misogynistic. With the posthumous publication of The Garden of Eden
in 1986 and the release of Lynn’s revisionary biography,4 the critical
consensus was challenged again in the sense that critics began to address
the complications in the author’s life. Another turning point in the critical
reception was the publication of his collected letters that disclosed some of
his life choices and motivations regarding the characters of his fiction. The
decades following the volume The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway:
Critical Essays,5 published in 1975, have seen a growth in Hemingway short
story criticism. The 1990 New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of
1 Head, The Modernist Short Story, 20.

2 Philip Young, Ernest Hemingway (New York: Rinehart, 1952); Philip Young,
Ernest Hemingway: A Reconsideration (University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1966).
3 Judith Fetterley, The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978).

4 Kenneth S. Lynn, Hemingway (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
5 Jackson J. Benson, ed., The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: Critical Essays
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1975).

10 Introduction
Ernest Hemingway1 attests to the elation of Hemingway’s status and also

the improvement in the quality of what had already seemed to be repetitive,
sterile criticism in the 1970s. In the new critical climate, scholars have
turned their attention to new methodologies and possibilities, questioning
long-accepted tenets in Hemingway criticism. For instance, the critical
heritage is revalued in the very recent volume edited by Moddelmog and
Gizzo,2 which considers the various contexts that informed the author’s life
and writing. Throughout the decades, scholars have combined traditional
avenues with newer approaches, but very little has been done about what
the most natural perspective may be for most of Hemingway’s readers. In
particular, Hemingway criticism has failed to explain the emotional
undercurrent of his short literary works or how readers build and engage
with the text. However, I argue that with the benefit of recent discoveries in
cognitive sciences, we are able to infer how textual perceptions creep up on
the reader’s mind.
Among the very few applications of cognitive poetics to Hemingway’s
fiction, Semino’s3 “Possible Worlds and Mental Spaces in Hemingway’s ‘A
Very Short Story’” develops a cognitive framework of mental space theory4
to deepen the understanding of Hemingway’s text. Mental spaces are
formed by means of linguistic features and the reader’s knowledge of the
world, which help Semino offer a plausible picture of the narrative worlds
processed by readers. In a similar vein, the methodological framework in
this book relies primarily on the theory of mental space, arguing that all
thought, in both its actual and fictional forms, manifests itself by activating
mental spaces and cross-mappings between them. However, in my research
direction, emphasis falls on the mental life of the created figures as I draw
on hypotheses raised by recent research about the transparency of fictional
minds. According to Palmer,5 they become visible in overt actions and
behaviors, providing thus transparent access to hidden states of mind. I
1 Jackson J. Benson, ed., New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest
Hemingway (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990).
2 Debra A. Moddelmog and Suzanne del Gizzo, Ernest Hemingway in Context
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

3 Elena Semino, “Possible Worlds and Mental Spaces in Hemingway’s ‘A Very
Short Story,’” in Cognitive Poetics in Practice, eds. Joanna Gavins and Gerard Steen
(London/New York: Routledge, 2003), 83–98.
4 Gilles Fauconnier, Mappings in Thought and Language (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997). See also: Gilles Fauconnier. “Mental Spaces,” in The
Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, eds. Dirk Geeraerts and Hubert
Cuyckens (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 353–376.
5 Alan Palmer, Fictional Minds (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004).
therefore examine the mind in action of Hemingway’s characters to prove

that there is a degree of transparency even in the case of very opaque minds.
The extension of this argument also has evident benefits for the study of
actual minds, as recognized by Bernini: “fiction gives access to multiple
internal opacities and to the interpretive nature of cognition.”1 In Hemingway’s
simple, unadorned stories, in which plot is deemphasized and esthetic
effects result from calculated repetition and sparse dialogue, there is little
description to reveal the depth of the characters’ thinking. So, an investigation
of the mental spaces created by their wishes, dreams, unrealized hypotheses,
and alternatives that are considered but never actualized can disclose the
emotional core of the story.
The other theory that called my attention to insights from cognitive
poetics is conceptual integration,2 which promises to shed new light on “the
way we think,” the title of Fauconnier and Turner’s 2002 seminal study. In
the 1990s, the two scholars3 launched a joint project meant to offer an even
more convincing view of how the mind is able to set up blended mental
spaces from where new meanings emerge. They examine the rapid connections
established between conflicting mental spaces that run counter to the present
story. Exposed to such potentially distracting information, we still remain
unconfused. Turner summarizes the force of this extraordinary feat of
imagination as follows: “Running multiple mental spaces, or, more generally,
multiple constellated networks of mental spaces, when we should be
absorbed by only one, and blending them when they should be kept apart,
is at the root of what makes us human.”4 Turner’s arguments guide my
analysis and help me indicate how blended mental spaces are conceptualized in
literature. In particular, Hemingway’s stories will be used as case studies
1 Marco Bernini, “The Opacity of Fictional Minds: Transparency, Interpretative

Cognition and the Exceptionality Thesis,” in The Cognitive Humanities. Embodied
Mind in Literature and Culture, ed. Peter Garratt (Durham: Palgrave Macmillan,
2016), 51.
2 Fauconnier, Mappings in Thought and Language; Mark Turner, “Conceptual
Blending and Counterfactual Argument in the Social and Behavioral Sciences,”

Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics: Logical, Methodological,
and Psychological Perspectives, eds. Philip E. Tetlock and Aaron Belkin (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 291–295.
3 Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, The Way We Think. Conceptual Blending and
the Mind’s Hidden Complexities (New York: Basic Books, 2002). See also: Gilles
Fauconnier and Mark Turner, “Conceptual Integration Networks,” Cognitive
Science 22, no. 2 (1998): 133–187.
4 Mark Turner, “Conceptual Integration,” in The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive
Linguistics, eds. Dirk Geeraerts and Hubert Cuyckens (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2007), 378.
12 Introduction
underlining that literary texts engage the mind in advanced mental work.
One illuminating example is the capacity for conceptual integration.
Hemingway’s characters are adept at creating mental alternatives that are
rapidly blended with other scenarios prompted by actual storyworlds. In
sum, they have the extraordinary capacity to operate mentally on the unreal,
to run simultaneous mental scenarios, and to perform off-line cognitive
simulations. The analyses that follow hold that virtual worlds, produced by
characters or narrators and acknowledged by readers, far outnumber the
worlds prompted by the factual narrative. Readers must therefore ignite
their cognitive abilities that are essential for dealing with virtuality and
counterfactuality. I hold that it is here that the knot of cognitive interpretation
lies. This argument will be supportive for advancing a model of reading
Hemingway’s short stories. I will test this theoretical hypothesis within the
framework suggested below.
Cognitive scientists have addressed the notion of counterfactual thinking
in conjunction with the theory of conceptual integration. Turner’s Conceptual
Blending and Counterfactual Argument in Social and Behavioral Sciences1
and Fauconnier and Turner’s The Way We Think are two examples of
outstanding research on the implications of counterfactual thinking in
diverse areas, such as social and behavioral sciences. In outlining their
hypotheses, they have shown that examples of counterfactuals may appear
in more common examples, such as the “if/then” conditional form, but they
may also take less visible or indirectly stated forms. Narratologist Gerald
Prince’s famous notion of the “disnarrated”2 describes counterfactuals as
articulated in hypothetical modes. Notable examples may include “all the
events that do not happen” but which “are nonetheless referred to (in a
negative or hypothetical mode) by the narrative text.” In a similar vein, the
concept of “hypothetical focalization” developed by cognitive narratologist
David Herman3 rethinks the nature of narrative. He explains that “hypothetical
focalization, or HF, is the formal marker of a peculiar epistemic modality,
in which […] the expressed world counterfactualizes or virtualizes the
reference world of the text.”4 Also of special relevance here is Marie-Laure
1 Turner, “Conceptual Blending,” 291–295.

2 Gerald Prince, “The Disnarrated,” Style 22, no. 1 (1988): 1–8.
3 Notable contributions to the field of cognitive narratology are: David Herman,
Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013); David
Herman, Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative (Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 2002); Karin Kukkonen, “Navigating Infinite Earths: Readers,
Mental Models, and the Multiverse of Superhero Comics,” StoryWorlds: A Journal
of Narrative Studies 2 (2010): 35–58.
4 Herman, Story Logic, 310.
Ryan’s theory of possible worlds,1 which refers to the private and virtual
worlds of the characters, which are embedded in the narratorial
construction. It is perhaps Hilary Dannenberg’s ground-breaking study2 on
counterfactuality that gives the most informed demonstration of how the
novel has evolved over time by following the main plot patterns of
coincidence and counterfactuality in alternation and at crucial moments.
With the insight from the abovementioned studies on counterfactuality
and possible worlds, this volume focuses on less visible mental scenarios
prompted by imaginative counterfactuals and hypothetical states. This line
of inquiry explains the intense mental activity in the reader who is only
guided by Hemingway narrators weary of subjective responses and
uninterested in rendering sensations. Instead, the emphasis lies on objective
details producing these emotions. This allows readers to infer the suggested
emotion and recreate what Cather calls “the inexplicable presence of the
thing not named.”3 In his study Art Matters, Robert Lamb contends that the
representation of the world is so intense in Hemingway that it virtually
creates the emotion. The technique of “intensifying the world” is then
recognized as vital to his esthetics.4 Even though emotions are omitted or
not expressed directly and metaphors are overtly rejected, one can still grasp
the emotional suggestiveness. Lamb explains that this depends on two
factors: “the reader’s sensitivity” and “the degree of their imaginative and
sympathetic involvement in the story.”5 This book examines the sources of
the reader’s imaginative involvement in a number of short stories that deal
with the physical reality of journeys, with movement and mobility. The
characters begin on straight roads but seldom fail to reach the destination as
the routes multiply. This not only requires a different kind of motion but,
invariably, a new locus of the mind. Here is the switch from the physical
landscape to the mental terrain of counterfactuality that has already been
introduced above. The idea of roads that have not been taken translates into
mental possibilities that may never be actualized. My demonstration is
1 Marie-Laure Ryan, Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).
2 Hillary P. Dannenberg, Coincidence and Counterfactuality. Plotting Time and
Space in Narrative Fiction (Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press, 2008).

3 Willa Cather, “The Novel Démeublé,” (1922) in Willa Cather: Stories, Poems, and
Other Writings, ed. Sharon O’Brien (New York: Library of America, 1987), 834–
837.
4 Robert Paul Lamb, Art Matters. Hemingway, Craft and the Creation of the Modern
Short Story (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010), 70.
5 Lamb, Art Matters, 72.
14 Introduction
based on the theory of conceptual metaphor.1 For instance, the metaphor

LIFE IS A JOURNEY helps me discover the intricate mental connections
emerging from mappings between the domain of life and the inferential
structures associated with journeys. In the end, this endeavor is meant to
conceptualize suppressed emotional turmoil, something that Hemingway
readers only used to feel viscerally.
As we shall see, the structure of this volume reflects its multiple goals.
They are all united, however, by my interest in exploring the mental
processes accompanying the production of meaning in short fiction—in
particular, the meaning emerging from non-obvious cognitive activity. The
first two chapters present the theoretical foundations. They contextualize
the ensuing discussion and investigate the possibilities of dialog between
various fields of cognitive science. It shows that the cognitive framework is
open to multiple perspectives. In this sense, Chapter 1 offers an outline of
the significant developments generated by the cognitive revolution that
helped establish the grounds of an empirically-based new science of
cognition. This chapter gives a clear sense of the intellectual forays
preceding the establishment of cognitive science in the mid-1950s. Chapter
2 briefly introduces two relevant sub-disciplines: cognitive poetics and
narratology. While the research methods and terminology employed are
more indebted to cognitive poetics, I am aware that in this field, research
must cross the borders of other disciplines. This section further explores the
embodied mind approach to literary studies alongside reading practices in
the cognitive age. In the remainder of the chapter, I seek to narrow down
the focus by addressing short fiction directly. Chapter 3 further investigates
relevant practices and theory in short fiction reading, using Hemingway’s
exemplary short stories as illustrations. The largely theoretical considerations
ought to be taken as points of departure for a more applied approach to the
American short fiction writer. Chapter 3 also introduces the concept of
counterfactual thinking and its relevance in short fiction reading practices.
Chapters 4 and 5 explore methodological approaches that can be applied to
literary investigations. They provide a cognitive analysis of narrative time
and space as elements that may affect the framing of conflict in the narrative
structure, produced on the virtual terrain of narrative possibilities. Chapter
5 outlines new directions in the study of fictional minds. By the end of this
1 In 1980, Lakoff and Johnson started research on the conceptual basis of the
metaphor. Other notable related contributions to the study of conceptual metaphors
are: Peter Crisps, “Conceptual Metaphors and its Expressions,” in Cognitive Poetics
in Practice, eds. Joanna Gavins and Gerard Steen (London/New York: Routledge,
2003), 99–113; Raymond W. Gibbs Jr., The Poetics of Mind. Figurative Thought,
Language, and Understanding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
book, I aim to have given a sense of the immediate positive implications of

a closer exploratory relationship between literary studies and cognitive
research. This reinforces the idea that can only be a sizeable advantage for
both in “an age in which the key intellectual goal is not to celebrate the
imagination but to make a science of it.”1
1 Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 89.

CHAPTER ONE
COGNITIVE SCIENCES COME TOGETHER
1.1 Mind, body, and cognition

This chapter provides a brief introduction to the major findings and tenets
of cognitive sciences with a view to applying them to literary studies. It
grounds them in a cognitive approach to advance new perspectives on the
cognitive-literary dialog. As I indicated in the introductory chapter, more
and more scholars are adhering to the disciplinary boundaries, seeking new
research opportunities in emergent areas of scientific inquiry. Despite
irrefutable differences, there are many recurrent methods and principles in
the cognitive-literary field. Scholars draw on these research commonalities
to offer new viewpoints on literature and, in particular, literary reading. In
practice, their concerted efforts concretized in 2013 when the term
“cognitive literary studies” (CLS) was coined.1 Some of the major topics
addressed in CLS are embodiment, emotion and empathy, immersion,
mental imagery, simulation, enactive perception, and so forth. While this
current work does not seem to be particularly unified, there is a consistent
interest in reading as a cognitive act. In this context, Burke and Troscianko
outline the general guidelines for CLS: “(1) brain structures and
neurological processes, (2) mental states and mental processes, and (3)
literature as a social and cultural phenomenon.”2 This idea of literature as
culture and as a component of the mind adds a new level of analysis to
cognitive science.
Before developing the contribution of literary scholars working with
cognitive science, an overview of the tenets of the founders of cognitive
science is necessary. For one thing, practitioners cover a wide range of
distinct disciplines: psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy,
anthropology, and artificial intelligence (AI). Given this high number of
individual theoretical agendas, it may often have been difficult to reach a
perfectly cohesive view on cognitive science. This interdisciplinarity may
explain why scholars prefer the phrase “cognitive sciences.” Despite potential
1 Burke and Troscianko, Cognitive Literary Science, 4–5.

2 Burke and Troscianko, Cognitive Literary Science, 25.
Cognitive Sciences Come Together 17
irregularities and the lack of a universally accepted definition, most of the

key topics researched by cognitive theoreticians have fallen under one broad
category: the nature of the mind, the mind-body problem, and the interaction
between the human mind and the physical world. The thinking mind and its
place in nature have always intrigued humankind in general and intellectuals
in particular since Aristotle. In our daily lives, we struggle to understand
how our individual brains work, how they react to the environment, and how
they condition our creative processes. We often feel intrigued by situations
in which the rapid connections between mental powers and brain activity
seem impossible to perceive. The work performed by machines mimicking
the mind’s inner workings can be equally puzzling. Sometimes we may ask
whether only the human being can have a mind or whether machines can
too. Can they think? How are we able to perceive the surrounding world or,
in cases of mental illnesses, is there something wrong with the brain or with
the mind? Such intriguing questions about our complex mental capacities
have been systematically posed by cognitive scientists. In light of these
existential queries, this chapter offers an overview of major theoretical
threads relevant to “the mind’s new science,” as phrased by Garden in his
eponymous study.1 This intellectual endeavor invites us to reconsider the
very nature of the mind and its relation to our physical bodies.
Over the last three centuries, philosophy has attempted to answer two
fundamental questions relating to one’s existence: What are minds? How
does the mind relate and interconnect with the body? In this context, this
chapter introduces a brief discussion of the traditional mind-body relation,
arguing against a dualistic view. The doctrine of dualism goes back to René
Descartes. A Cartesian perspective holds that human beings are distinct
from their bodies, meaning that the mind lacks any physical characteristics
and should be seen as a purely immaterial substance. In Cartesian dualism,
individuals are subjected to this flow of immaterial substance, which
enables them to engage in a number of mental states lacking any visible
physical characteristics. It is only in the mind that thoughts and feelings
manifest themselves, but not in bodies or brains. Bodies and minds are seen
as distinct substances: bodies are material substances that are able to
develop the attribute of extension in space, whereas minds cannot take the
form of material substances, which gives them the contrasting attribute of
thought. Dualism purports that bodies alone are incapable of thought
creation and processes and are exclusively determined by a set of mechanical
laws, and thus incapable of producing any intelligent activity. This line of
1Howard Gardner, The Mind’s New Science. A History of the Cognitive Revolution
(New York: Basic Books, 1984).
18 Chapter One
inquiry goes as far as to claim that minds can exist without the physical
shape of a body and are able to exist even in a disembodied state. Clearly,
the view has elicited a series of inevitable objections, such as the possibility
that the mental and physical substances, while displaying radically different
properties, may mutually effect some degree of influence one upon the
other. On this issue, questions are raised, for instance, by Heil: “But if minds
and bodies are utterly different kinds of substance, it is hard to see how such
causal interaction could occur. Minds or selves […] are immaterial thinking
but unextended substances. Material bodies, in contrast, are extended but
unthinking. How could entities of such wholly different kinds affect one
another causally? How could an event in an immaterial mind bring about a
material effect? How could a physical event beget a change in an immaterial
mind?”1
The fundamental Cartesian thesis was rendered implausible by empirical
evidence, such as reports of out-of-body experiences where individuals
claim they are able to float away and see themselves out of their physical
shells. Strange as they may appear, such abnormal or disputable experiences
where individuals seem to be enjoying a state of disembodiment have been
put down as resulting from sheer transitory hallucinations, however. Similar
reports of attempts to travel in time or reimagining past events differently
are also less solid evidence than is necessary to prove that the past can be
directly changed. Such acts of sheer imagination are insufficiently reliable
to conclude that human beings are able to live outside of the human body.2
Dissatisfied with the tenets of the dualist theory, behaviorist philosophers3
refocused their research questions in the empirical field, where philosophical
investigation stemmed from observing behavioral manifestations. They did
not wish to address the challenges of introspection and insight into mental
operations as mental activity was considered unreliable from a scientific
standpoint. It was regarded as unable to explain behavior and predict human
acts. In essence, scholars such as Ivan Pavlov, B. F. Skinner, E. L.
Thorndike, and John B. Watson advance the claim that it is only the analysis
of overt behavior in both verbal and non-verbal forms that can lead to serious
1 John Heil, Philosophy of Mind. A Contemporary Introduction (New York/London:
Routledge, 2004), 22–23.

2 Jonathan Lowe, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), 12.

3 See, for instance, the work of the behaviorist psychologists, such as: Clark L. Hull,
“The Conflicting Psychologies of Learning – Away out,” Psychological Review 42

(1935): 491–516; B. F. Skinner, Science and Human Behavior (New York: Macmillan,
1953); Edward L. Thorndike, Human Learning (New York: Johnson Reprint
Corporation, 1931).
research outcomes. They argue that thoroughly controlled environments and

objective observations of manifested behavior can collectively answer
questions about the workings of our mental life. In his seminal article
“Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It,” American psychologist John B.
Watson established the principles of behaviorism, as follows:
Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental
branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of
behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the
scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with which they
lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness. The behaviorist,
in his efforts to get a unitary scheme of animal response, recognizes no
dividing line between man and brute. The behavior of man, with all of its
refinement and complexity, forms only a part of the behaviorist’s total
scheme of investigation.1
At the heart of Watson’s manifesto is the idea that the science of

behavior ought to avoid such complex topics as mental representation,
thought processing, and mental constructs. As behaviorists argue that the
essence of our human cognitive activity is impossible to explain, they turn
their attention to the nature of the environment, which behaviorism believes
to be superior to the “mysterious” mental life. Behaviorist scientists then
turn to samples of hardly decipherable mental activity by using the language
of observable behavior. According to the behaviorist view, Lowe stresses
that “the only evidence on whose basis attitudinal and other mental states
can be ascribed to subjects is behavioural evidence, that is, publicly
available evidence of how people behave in various circumstances.”2 Both
psychological and philosophical behaviorism reject the view that external
acts emerge from internal mental states. The difference between the two
doctrines is that the former is based on empirical research, whereas the latter
seeks to define the nature of the mind and the origins of mental states. In
Bechtel’s words, “philosophical behaviorism is primarily concerned with
the semantics of our common mentalistic vocabulary. It seeks to explain the
meaning of mental terms like belief without having to treat them as referring
to some mental substance. The goal is to translate terms that purport to refer
to mental activity into terms that speak only of behaviors or propensities to
behave in certain ways.”3
1 John B. Watson, “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It,” Psychological Review
22, no. 2 (1913): 2.

2 Lowe, Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind, 44.
3 William Bechtel, Philosophy of Mind. An Overview for Cognitive Science
(Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1988), 89.

20 Chapter One
What the discipline of philosophical behaviorism was significantly

successful in addressing was assembling a mental vocabulary designed to
describe behavior. According to philosopher Gilbert Ryle,1 our mental
vocabulary needs to be “reduced” in order to provide an accurate description
of behavior, which the philosopher calls “propensities to behave” in certain
ways. His guiding idea is that the set of mental idioms we own accurately
reflect our mental dispositions to act in particular ways. Ryle illustrates this
with the following example: if we believe it is likely to rain, then we are
disposed to a series of behavior propensities, such as to change our plans for
a picnic, carry an umbrella, stay indoors, etc. Such positions as the one given
in the previous example are debatable, however, on the basis that
philosophical behaviorists can be seen to account for a reductive analysis of
mental states. Many of our mental states and beliefs manifest in other forms,
not only in and through overt behavior. A dispositional analysis further
avoids addressing the uncertainty over the existence of potentially unlimited
behavioral actions or dispositions to behave, all of which are dependent on
a wide variety of contextual circumstances. Lowe2 argues that it is therefore
difficult to anticipate the exact type of attitude that might be generated by a
particular mental activity. This may not always happen despite the presence
of the same mental state, which may not generate a similar behavior on that
particular occasion since individual beliefs or desires may slightly affect the
situation. In his own words: “So we see that there can in fact be no such
thing as behaviour that is uniquely characteristic of someone who possesses
an attitudinal state with a given propositional content or a sensational state
of a certain type. And consequently it is impossible to explain what it means
for someone to possess such a state in terms of his or her supposed
behavioural dispositions.”3
In the early 1950s, a shift in the paradigm appeared that resisted reducing
the analysis of mental activity to mere observable behavior. In 1959, Noam
Chomsky4 published “A Review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior,” in
which he reconsidered the aims of psychology and the theory of mental
processes and stated that their object of study was similar and should be
shared. He then showed that Skinner’s behaviorist model of learning was
largely inadequate on the basis that Skinner had attempted to explain
linguistic behavior by exploring the same stimulus-response theory and by
1 Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (New York: Routledge, 2009 [1949]).
2 Lowe, Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind, 43–44.
3 Lowe, Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind, 44.
4 Noam Chomsky, “A Review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior,” in Readings in
Philosophy of Psychology, ed. Ned Block (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 1980 [1959]), 48–64.
placing special emphasis on overt behavior. Chomsky1 deemed Skinner’s

lines of argument fundamentally flawed and argued that our linguistic
choices cannot be objective representations of the external world but are
instead accurate mirrorings of the structure of our individual mind, which
forms the basis of his original “mentalistic” linguistic theory. To achieve
this, Chomsky’s explicit goal was to call attention to particular mental areas,
such as that of language, that normally operate with a set of clear rules and
principles. According to his theory, at some deep level of understanding,
speakers possess a set of rules and principles that are known intuitively. Due
to his ambitious goals, Chomsky’s body of works is more than a linguistic
contribution, in that it shows that the study of language is able to provide a
viable model for how to study the mind and other additional mental
processes. In fact, his main contribution lies in assembling the principles of
modern linguistics and new cognitive sciences that were about to revive
interest in the intricate dimensions of the mind and its complex structures.
This brief overview of Chomsky’s work can only scratch at the surface
of this complex scientific territory, but it nevertheless gives a sense of the
several interdisciplinary lines of inquiry that preceded the official birth of
cognitive science in the mid-1950s. Its origins can be found in the
fundamental questions first posed by classical philosophy, later investigated
in depth by theorists with a cognitive reorientation in the early 20th century,
and brought to prominence toward the end of the last century. One of the
significant moments was in September 1948 when the California Institute
of Technology organized a conference to prompt discussions on how the
nervous system can influence behavior. On this occasion, psychologist Karl
Lashley2 presented a seminal paper entitled “The Problem of Serial Order
in Behavior,” later published in 1951. This study challenged the traditional
principles of psychology and set a new agenda for research in cognition by
confronting the assertions of the then popular associative chains between
stimuli and responses, used to explain thought production in linear terms.
Lashley clearly expressed his dissatisfaction with these linear chains, which
he found unable to explain rapidly unfolding sequences of events as they
give but very little time for feedback and reflection on the preceding events.
For instance, in the case of someone playing an arpeggio, the tones succeed
one another with such rapidity that it is almost impossible to reflect on one
particular preceding tone,3 making it impossible to explain them by
referring to the surrounding stimuli present in the environment, as
1 Chomsky, “A Review.”
2 Karl S Lashley, “The Problem of Serial Order in Behavior,” in Cerebral Mechanisms
in Behavior, ed. L. A. Jeffress (New York: Wiley, 1951), 112–131.
3 Gardner, The Mind’s New Science, 12–13.
22 Chapter One
behaviorists state. This is why Lashley maintains that behavior sequences

have to be systematically organized in advance in the form of overarching
structures present in the nervous system. At that historical moment,
Lashley’s theory was revolutionary: brain processes determine subsequent
patterns of behavior and dictate how behavior will manifest in its
environment. Thus, his new theory challenged the theoretical framework of
behaviorism and the idea of the authoritative influence of external behavior
over mental processes and representations.
The research questions addressed by scientists in the early 20th century
focused on the exploration of mental states using increasingly intensive
scientific methods to identify the underlying motivations and determinants
of behaviors. This new theory of mentalism,1 in direct contrast to the claims
of behaviorism, no longer took mental activity for granted but investigated
the role of mental states and processes as the cause of visible patterns of
behavior.
Another major philosophical position on the mind-body relation, which
was expected to be scientifically relevant for cognitive sciences, appeared
in the 1950s in the form of materialism which recognized the existence and
importance of internal mental states. The identity theory, seen as a strand of
materialism, held the view that mental states can be identical to physical
brain properties. In the 1950s, this theory was extensively developed by U.
T. Place2 and J. J. C. Smart3 in Australia and Herbert Feigl4 in the USA.
These scholars suggested that mental vocabulary and physical idioms can
actually refer to the same types of states, even though they may be markedly
different. Not only do mental events correlate with brain processes, but they
are nothing else but neurobiologic events. Accordingly, minds are both
material entities (brains) and mental states, which may automatically give
them the material properties of brains and the chemical composition of the
nervous system. If identity theorists5 advanced the idea that mental states
1 William James, The Principles of Psychology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 1981 [1890]); Jerry A. Fodor, The Language of Thought (New
York: MIT Press, 1975).
2 Ullin T. Place, “Is Consciousness a Brain Process?” The British Journal of
Psychology 47, no. 1 (1956): 44–50.

3 John J. C. Smart, “Sensations and Brain Processes,” Philosophical Review 68, no.
2 (1959): 141–156.
4 Herbert Feigl, The ‘Mental’ and the ‘Physical’: The Essay and a Postscript
(Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1958).

5 See, for instance, Davidson’s identity thesis: Donald Davidson, “Mental Events,”
in Experience and Theory, eds. L. Foster and J. W. Swanson (Amherst: University

of Massachusetts Press, 1970), 79–102.
overlap with brain processes, many others objected1 to this thesis. Since
mental and brain events are often experienced differently, it means that we
may have “privileged” access only to our states of mind; we are limited in
investigating the material states of our nervous system in an indirect way
only. With these two notably asymmetrical types of access, the idea of a
strict identity between mental and physical states becomes generally false,
as argued by Heil:
Your mental life is “private” in a way that no material object or state ever is.
You are aware of your own states of mind and the qualities of your conscious
experiences directly and without evidence or observation. I, in contrast, have
access to your mental life, if at all, only indirectly. I infer your thoughts and
feelings by observing your behavior, verbal or otherwise. Suppose I observe
goings-on in your brain, and suppose these goings-on are reliable indicators
of your mental condition. Then I am in an epistemologically strong position
to know what you are thinking and feeling. Still, my access to your thoughts
and feelings differs from yours. I must infer the character of what you
experience “directly.”2
In defense of the identity theory, Smart3 was willing to accept the

possibility that mental events could be different in kind, but he believes that
they may eventually become brain events. He explains that most people are
not acquainted with their brain processes or with their brain idioms but, on
the other hand, they are familiar with their private mental states. In the end,
Smart clarifies that the identity theory needs to be understood differently,
away from pure folk understanding. He writes: “An illiterate peasant might
well be able to talk about his sensations without knowing about his brain
processes, just as he can talk about lightning though he knows nothing of
electricity.”4 Another objection suggests that there are a number of
properties that may be attributed either to mental events or to brain events,
but not to both. This means, for instance, that mental events may lack spatial
coordinates, which further indicates that an attempt to locate several mental
events would fail and become meaningless. Shaffer holds that “so far as
thoughts are concerned, it makes no sense to talk about a thought’s being
located in some place or places in the body. If I report having suddenly
thought something, the question where in my body that thought occurred
1 See, for instance, G. E. M. Anscombe’s skepticism on identity theory in

Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind (Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press, 1981).
2 Heil, Philosophy of Mind, 74.
3 Smart, “Sensations and Brain Processes.”
4 Smart, “Sensations and Brain Processes,” 147.
24 Chapter One
would be utterly senseless.”1 At this stage, the worlds of philosophy and

neuroscience became more polarized due to the continuous debates between
identity theorists and their critics, who have been unable to reach common
ground on this matter. This point is further discussed by Daniel Dennett as
follows:
The Identity Theory’s defining claim that mental events are not merely
parallel to, coincide with, caused by, or accompaniments of brain events, but
are (strictly identical with) brain events, divides people in a curious fashion.
To some people it seems obviously true (though it may take a little fusing
with details to get it properly expressed), and to others it seems just as
obviously false. The former tend to view all attempts to resist the Identity
Theory as motivated by an irrational fear of the advance of the physical
sciences, a kind of humanistic hylephobia, while the latter tend to dismiss
identity-theorists as blinded by misplaced science-worship to the manifest
preposterousness of the identity claim.2
Despite identity theory’s controversial views, current work in cognitive

sciences is strongly connected with its claims rather than those of
philosophical behaviorism. It argues that mental states are accompanied by
a sense of reality and a degree of physicality that make them a reliable object
of study. Accordingly, mental events are equated with neurological events,
and thus another thread of neuroscience theories is generated. Advocates of
these theories3 appear to ignore cognitive phenomena altogether in order to
explore neural processes more extensively. In this context, eliminative
materialism places so much emphasis on neurological processes that the
vocabulary necessary to describe mental states is replaced with a number of
brain idioms. Among others, Churchland4 and Stich5 claim that intentional
states, desires, intentions, and beliefs do not exist. They mean that thoughts
1 Jerome A. Shaffer, “Recent Work on the Mind-Body Problem,” American

Philosophical Quarterly 2, no. 2 (1965): 97.
2 Daniel C. Dennett, “Current Issues in the Philosophy of Mind,” American
Philosophical Quarterly 15, no. 4 (1978): 252.

3 Paul M. Churchland, “Some Reductive Strategies in Cognitive Neurobiology,”
Mind 95, no. 379 (1986): 279–309. See also: Paul M. Churchland, “Reduction,
Qualia, and the Direct Introspection of Brain States,” The Journal of Philosophy 82,
no. 1 (1985): 8–28; Paul K. Feyerabend, “Materialism and the Mind-Body
Problem,” The Review of Metaphysics, vol.17, no. 1 (1963): 49–67.
4 Paul M. Churchland, Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1979); Paul M. Churchland, “Eliminative Materialism

and the Propositional Attitudes,” Journal of Philosophy 78 (1981): 67–90.
5 Steve Stich, From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case Against Belief
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983).

and intentions are in fact an intricate network of complex neural mechanisms

that need to be studied by scientific standards. This principle makes them
skeptical about the platitudes of folk psychology, which Heil defines as “the
commonsense theory of mind encoded in our language, enshrined in our
social and legal institutions and refined in the social and behavioral
sciences.”1 Beyond a relatively small nucleus of theorists, eliminativism has
not enjoyed wider acceptance. McCauley2 concludes that it failed to
demonstrate exactly how commonsense psychology can be replaced, or
even eliminated, since without a mentalistic language, it would be impossible
to handle everyday situations well.
On the other hand, Heil3 argues that the eliminativist theory may be a
worthwhile investigative tool as it is the natural extension of “the intentional
stance,” as defined by Dennett.4 He sees it as the attribution of desires,
beliefs, intentions, or reasons for actions belonging to any kind of system,
whether this is a system of humans, minerals, plants, or artifacts. By “taking
up the intentional stance,” predicting and making sense of behavior become
easier. In Dennett’s words, “the point of the intentional stance is to treat an
entity as an agent in order to predict its actions.”5 He further argues that
mental phenomena are generally marked by a degree of intentionality,
which makes it possible to describe mental processes as intentional systems.
Humans and computer programs can both be described as agents whose
purposeful behavior can be explained. Such entities supposedly behave as
if they were rational agents, governed by well-defined propositional
attributes. To the individual, taking up the intentional stance seems to be an
unavoidable task. Our interactions with non-human entities usually take
place after having identified a set of beliefs, intentions, or reasons for action.
Dennett adds: “Adopting the intentional stance is not just a good idea but
the key to unraveling the mysteries of the mind—all kinds of minds. It is a
method that exploits similarities in order to discover differences—the huge
collection of differences that have accumulated between the minds of our
ancestors and ours, and also between our minds and those of our fellow
inhabitants of the planet.”6

2 Robert N. McCauley, “Intertheoretic Relations and the Future of Psychology,”
Philosophy of Science 53, no. 2 (1986): 179–199.
4 Daniel C. Dennett, Kinds of Minds. Toward an Understanding of Consciousness
(New York: Basic Books, 1996).

5 Dennett, Kinds of Minds, 34.
6 Dennett, Kinds of Minds, 27.
26 Chapter One
Another version of materialism (the token identity type) proves to be

more compatible with the research in cognitive sciences, in that it addresses
the philosophical mind-body relation in a similar way as the advocates of
the cognitive paradigm. In the main, it makes the claim that every “token”
of a mental state is in fact a “token” of a brain event, but also suggests that
there are a few incompatibilities between internal mental events and neural
events. Token identity theorists1 hold the view that while two individuals
may be in the same mental state, they could still experience a different brain
state. In their attempt to dissociate mental events from brain events, theorists
have appealed to functionalist philosophical research. Most congenial to the
primary aims of cognitive sciences, the philosophical program developed
by functionalism holds that states of mind are realized by brain states
without being identical with the latter.2 In light of the rising interest in
computation in the 1950s and 1960s, functionalism was best placed to
observe the implications of computational processes for a deeper and more
accurate investigation of mental events. As computers replicate the workings
of the human mind with a degree of precision, the advent of such
sophisticated machines gave hope to scientists that it was just a matter of
time until human cognitive processes were fully dissected. AI scientists
have been designing and reviewing computational programs that are able to
store and retrieve information, recognize patterns, or classify information in
the same ways humans use their own “mental programs” and symbolic
language to do the same and in the same way. Computing machines were
designed to be able to perform the same cognitive tasks as the ones
conducted by humans. This means that, for instance, identical computational
processes can appear in a range of artificially constructed mechanisms, in
spite of their being built with different types of material compositions. As
symbol processors, machines can show therefore that thinking can now be
replicated by artificial devices made of transistors and vacuum tubes rather
than nerves and tissues. Heil concludes pointedly: “Every program is
‘embodied,’ perhaps, in some material device or other. But the very same
program can run on very different sorts of material device. In the same vein,
we might suppose that every mind has some material embodiment, although
minds may have very different kinds of material embodiment.”3 In fact, the
1 See Jaegwon Kim, “On the Psycho-Physical Identity Theory,” American

Philosophical Quarterly 3 (1966): 227–235; Donald Davidson, “Mental Events,” in
Essays on Actions & Events (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 205–227.
2 See D. H. Armstrong, “A Materialist Theory of the Mind,” Philosophical
Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 74 (1969): 73–79; David K. Lewis, “An Argument for the
Identity Theory,” The Journal of Philosophy 63, no. 1 (1966): 17–25.
idea of “multiple realizability” is central to the functionalist theory. As

shown above, it indicates that one mental property can be realized by other
properties in a different entity.
American philosopher Hilary Putnam1 was among the first scholars to
take an interest in computational operations and their relevance to the
understanding of human thought processes. He strengthened the idea that
mental events can be realized in different physical media, a theory further
developed by Jerry Fodor,2 who added that the functioning of a system
depended on its software rather than on its hardware. This led to cognitive
sciences embracing the information-processing approach and viewing the
mind as a computational device able to manipulate symbols and perform
cognitive operations. However, this new mental computational analysis
theory seemed to be rather unsatisfactory, since it appeared to restrict the
complexity of the human mind to nothing else than a set of machine-like
processes, as argued by Neisser: “None of [these programs] does even
remote justice to the complexity of human mental processes. Unlike men,
‘artificially intelligent’ programs tend to be single minded, undistractable,
and unemotional.”3
Early cognitive theories in AI arguing that machines can think and use
humanlike cognitive processes advanced a limited model of the mind and
failed to account for the complex ways in which human beings think and
reason in the world. Criticism prompted AI scientists to refine and develop
their first programs able to manipulate symbols in finite systems into more
complex ones. Later, more advanced digital computers tried to simulate the
intricate architecture of the mind, but their artificial neural systems often
failed to replicate the immense diversity of living neural connectivity
accurately. In the end, the point is not to claim that human beings are
nothing else than mechanical robots but rather to show that the type of mind-
body relation may be analogous to the relation computer programs have
with the physical device in which they are designed to run. This analogy4
representing minds as computers advanced another research objective
aimed at discovering the representational capacities of the mind. Taking the
computer machine analogy further, we note that the mind works on two
levels: the “hardware” level and the “software” level. Likewise, in computer
devices, the hardware shows how the device is programmed and the
1 Hilary Putnam, “Meaning and Reference,” Journal of Philosophy 70, no. 19

(1973): 609–711.
2 Jerry A. Fodor, “Special Sciences (Or: The Disunity of Science as a Working
Hypothesis),” Synthese 28, no. 2 (1974): 97–115.

3 Ulric Neisser, Cognitive Psychology (New York: Psychology Press), 9.
4 Heil, Philosophy of Mind, 92–97.
28 Chapter One
software shows how it operates. By analogy, neuroscientists aim to explore

the human brain in conjunction with the nervous system in order to offer
plausible explanations on the workings of the “hardware,” while psychologists
examine the “software.” In sum, the appeal of AI systems lies largely in the
promise to help us understand “mind as machine.”1 Computational concepts
have possibly sharpened philosophical views2 and enabled scientists to
implement their ideas in more scientific and rigorous ways, as supported by
Gardner:
In addition to serving as a model of human thought, the computer also serves

as a valuable tool to cognitive scientific work: most cognitive scientists use
it to analyze their data, and an increasing number attempt to simulate
cognitive processes on it. Indeed, artificial intelligence, the science built
around computer simulation, is considered by many the central discipline in
cognitive science and the one most likely to crowd out, or render
superfluous, other older fields of study.3
In this sense, the study of “mind as machine” is an empirically based

effort to show how the human mind functions. Key findings on the nervous
system, breakthroughs in cognitive psychology and in artificial intelligence,
and tools from logics and mathematics have all created a new and complex
pathway for cognitive sciences, as they build on the interest in the
computational and representational capacity of the mind. Cognitive
scientists do not take mental activity for granted but carefully analyze the
representational level of the mind, paying detailed attention to such
representational entities as symbols, image schemas, frames, scripts, or
mental models. Gardner adds that “the major accomplishment of cognitive
science has been the clear demonstration of the validity of positing a level
of mental representation: a set of constructs that can be invoked for the
explanation of cognitive phenomena, ranging from visual perception to
story comprehension.”4 Such theoretical reflections on the nature of mind
and its place in nature truly speak with more than one voice but need to be
1 Margaret A. Boden, Mind as Machine. A History of Cognitive Science (New York:

Oxford University Press, 2006).
2 Reference is made to the focus on the formation and representation of mental
events, as shown in D. M. Armstrong, The Nature of Mind and Other Essays (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1980) and Lewis, “An Argument for the Identity
Theory.”
3 Gardner, The Mind’s New Science, 40.
4 Gardner, The Mind’s New Science, 383.
regarded as a unifying intellectual enterprise developed prior to the

launching of “the mind’s new science.”1
1.2 The turn to embodied cognition

This section continues to explore “the cognitive commitment” as proposed
by Lakoff2 in 1990. It refers to a number of generally accepted assumptions
in cognitive theories. Firstly, it claims that the relationship between
language, mind, and experience is complemented by what is empirically
known about minds and brains from other disciplines. This explains the
theoretical incursion in the evolution of cognitive science outlined in the
previous sub-chapter and also the overall highly interdisciplinary nature of
this book. Secondly, the commitment maintains that cognitive concepts are
engaged in constant dialog with the external world of sensory experience.
In other words, an exploration of the type of interaction with the world is in
fact an attempt at comprehending the inner organization of one’s conceptual
patterns.
The idea of embodiment3 mentioned above provides a solid theoretical
framework for cognitive theorists, in particular for linguists. The thesis of
“embodied cognition” maintains that both the human mind and the
conceptual system are “functions” emerging from the interaction between
individuals and the world they inhabit. Placed at the heart of everyday
experiences, the human body, with its distinct cognitive structure, appears
to visibly impact how individuals perceive the nature of personal
experiences. This automatically implies that the discovery of one’s unique
physical body, endowed with natural biologic scaffolding, can pave the way
toward a deeper understanding of embodied experiences and subsequently
to a refined understanding of human cognition. The idea of the thinking
mind as suffused by the body argues against the default conceptions of body
and brain and invites an inquiry into conceptual thought and language
processes. According to the notion of the mind as embodied, the cognitive
theory of embodiment4 holds that our conceptual categories and structures
1 Gardner, The Mind’s New Science.

2 George Lakoff, “The Invariance Hypothesis: Is Abstract Reason Based on Image-
Schemas?” Cognitive Linguistics 1, no. 1 (1990): 39–74.
3 See, for instance, Tim Rohrer, “Embodiment and Experientialism,” in The Oxford
Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, eds. Dirk Geeraerts and Hubert Cuyckens

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 25–47.
4 Johnson, Body in the Mind; George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things:
What Categories Reveal about the Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
30 Chapter One
and all the other sense-making operations are mediated by bodily

experiences, which means that they are constructed on the basis of
experience and under the restraints imposed by our bodies.
By addressing complex issues questioning one’s ability to create and
comprehend meanings, cognitive linguistics has begun an investigation of
the roots of human creativity. The body of research outlined below aims to
prove that the ground-breaking developments reached by cognitive linguists
can be applied to other neighboring areas of study and research concerned
with the nature of language, regarded as a “product of general cognitive
abilities.”1 In this context, cognitive theories of meaning formation2 have
strengthened two major arguments: 1. Meanings are not “packaged” or “pre-
encoded” in language; 2. they emerge out of our embodied and dynamic
experience. In addition, this new approach to the formation of meanings
reconsiders them as situational and contextualized. In this light, an
important part of the available research is devoted to the study of the
continuum between language and experience, namely how our conceptual
patterns become reflected in the language we speak. This can be found in
Fillmore’s research in frame semantics3 and his theory of construction
grammar,4 Lakoff and Johnson’s joint project on conceptual metaphors,5
1987); Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By; Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy
in the Flesh.
1 Antonio Barcelona and Javier Valenzuela, “An Overview of Cognitive Linguistics,”
in Cognitive Linguistics. Convergence and Expansion, eds. Mario Brdar, Stefan Th.
Gries, and Milena Žic Fuchs (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2011), 20.
2 Richard J. Gerrig, Experiencing Narrative Worlds. On the Psychological Activities
of Reading (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998 [1993]); Catherine Emmott,

Narrative Comprehension: A Discourse Perspective (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1999 [1997]). See also: Catherine Emmott, “Reading for Pleasure: A
Cognitive Poetic Analysis of ‘Twists in the Tale’ and Other Plot Reversals in
Narrative Texts,” in Cognitive Poetics in Practice, eds. Joanna Gavins and Gerard
Steen (London/New York: Routledge, 2003), 145–160; Catherine Emmott, Anthony
J. Sanford and Eugene J. Dawydiak, “Stylistics Meets Cognitive Science: Studying
Style in Fiction and Reader’s Attention from an Interdisciplinary Perspective,” Style
41, no. 2 (2007): 204–227; Herman, Story Logic.
3 Charles J. Fillmore, “Frame Semantics,” in Linguistics in the Morning Calm, ed.
Linguistic Society of Korea (Seoul, Korea: Hanshin Publishing Company, 1982),

111–137. See also: Charles J. Fillmore, “Frames and the Semantics of Understanding,”
Quaderni di Semantica 6, no. 2 (1985): 222–254.
4 Charles J. Fillmore, “The Mechanisms of ‘Construction Grammar’,” in Proceedings
of the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, 13–15

February 1988, eds. Shelley Axmaker et al. (The Berkeley Linguistic Society, 1988),
35–55.
5 Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By.
Lakoff’s1 and Fauconnier and Turner’s theories of conceptual integration,2

Turner and Fauconnier’s,3 Leonard Talmy’s,4 and Anna Wierzbicka’s5
theories of conceptual semantics, Ronald W. Langacker’s cognitive
grammar,6 Lakoff’s7 problems of categorization, or Fauconnier’s study of
mental spaces.8
The research conducted by cognitive linguistics outlined above will
further support my investigation of how specific language processes take
part in the emergence of literary meaning. According to Turner: “Perhaps
the most encouraging signs of cognitive linguistics […] are its eagerness to
explore all languages, including literary language, and its commitment to
linguistic research as part of [the] general inquiry into the capacity of the
human mind.”9 With reference to literary texts, this book will explore a host
of distinct faculties of the mind that allow us to formulate the final construct,
i.e. the story. I have found inspiration toward this end in Barbara
Dancygier’s concept of stories as “linguistic artifacts.”10 She argues that,
whether or not texts are supposed to carry meaningful insights, there have
to be specific linguistic phenomena that can drive the literary meaning. In
this regard, the theories advanced by cognitive linguists may explain how
meanings in stories are generated while their instruments can be successfully
tested in ample literary contexts. Cognitive enterprise explores a number of
modes of textual interaction, such as the ability of readers to evoke cultural
frames of reference while they are engaged in reading. It also studies their
mental capacity of blending narrative spaces, which Dancygier details as
1 Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things.

2 Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think.
3 Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier, “Metaphor, Metonymy, and Binding,” in
Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads. A Cognitive Perspective, ed. Antonio

Barcelona (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2000), 133–145; Mark Turner and Gilles
Fauconnier, “Conceptual Integration and Formal Expression,” Metaphor and Symbolic
Activity 10, no. 3 (1995): 183–204.
4 Talmy, Toward a Cognitive Semantics.
5 Anna Wierzbicka, Semantics: Primes and Universals (Oxford/New York: Oxford
University Press, 1996).

6 Ronald W. Langacker, “Convergence in Cognitive Linguistics,” in Cognitive
Linguistics. Convergence and Expansion, eds. Mario Brdar, Stefan Th. Gries, and
Milena Žic Fuchs (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2011), 9–16. See also:
Langacker, Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, vols. 1 & 2.
7 Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things.
8 Fauconnier, Mental Spaces.
9 Turner, Reading Minds, 22.
10 Barbara Dancygier, The Language of Stories. A Cognitive Approach (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2012), 195.

32 Chapter One
“reading the words, activating the frames, searching for correlates in one’s
experience, making cross-space connections, blending narrative spaces,
establishing identities, constructing tentative scenarios, storing them in
memory, revising them as new events are narrated, responding emotionally,
et cetera.”1 These are illustrations of complex conceptual operations necessary
to access meaning which normally happen without conscious awareness of
their complexity.
Nevertheless, in his ground-breaking study Reading Minds, Turner2
argues that when we read literature, we employ the same conceptual
material available in everyday language use, which is the condition upon its
intelligibility. With this view in mind, originality is expected to lie in the
territory of our ordinary imaginative understanding. Turner goes on to
explain: “It is only by being constituted upon commonplace conceptual
patterns that provide most of the meaning to literary texts that literary texts
can be for us something other than impossible questions, opaque challenges,
bizarre and mute anomalies.”3 The point is, however, that the ordinary
conceptual apparatus should not be underestimated or regarded as relatively
simple, with implications that are only too obvious to discuss. By contrast,
the reader’s ability to elucidate meaning in literature depends precisely on
how they explore conventional conceptual resources. In the age of cognitive
science, the study of literature grounded in shared patterns of thought opens
a new line of inquiry: “a concept of literature must be simultaneously a
concept of the human mind,” as supported by Turner.4 In line with this
argument, the chapters that follow examine the vast space of automatic and
unconscious thought in short literary works. The definition that I embrace
is given by Vermeule in his recent study “The New Unconscious.” He holds
that the unconscious includes “a wide array of automatic processes and
activities of which we are not and cannot become consciously aware”,5 In
other words, all the mental work that cannot be seen or experienced directly.
Perhaps it is necessary to remember that most cognitive activity is
performed outside conscious awareness.6 With the instruments of cognitive
poetics and narratology, I intend to explore the gaps left by the conscious
brain and glimpse into the unconscious mind.
1 Dancygier, The Language of Stories, 54.

5 Blakey Vermeule, “The New Unconscious,” in The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive
Literary Studies, ed. Lisa Zunshine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 468.
6 Vermeule, “The New Unconscious,” 469.
1.3 Windows to the mind: the theory of conceptual

blending
The first step toward a cognitively-oriented mapping of a literary text is to
present a model of reading that explores the processes of meaning formation
in literature, using instruments from cognitive linguistics. Nevertheless, this
is not reduced to basic linguistic details, but will be supplemented in Chapter
2 with findings from recent narratological studies that have already moved
in the direction of cognitive explanations (see the work of Fludernik,1 Jahn,2
Abbott,3 and Herman4). The cross-fertilization of linguistic research in the
area of cognitive science with narrative analysis has collected solid evidence
that can show the goals of literary, linguistic, and cognitive studies have
become largely the same. The “cognitive commitment” discussed in the
previous section is an illustration of their shared goals.
I have found much of the inspiration for this study in two cognitively
oriented linguistic theories: the first is the theory of mental spaces
(Fauconnier,5 Fauconnier and Sweetser6), which developed the tools and
methodological framework for a critical analysis concerned with the
narrative mental spaces constructed while we read. The second theory of
conceptual integration or blending (Fauconnier and Turner7) uses Fauconnier’s
theory of mental spaces. The former can help readers decipher the meaningful
correlations between mental spaces (“mental mappings”) prompted on-line
1 Monika Fludernik, Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology (London: Routledge, 1996).

2 Manfred Jahn, “‘Speak, friend, and enter’: Garden Paths, Artificial Intelligence,
and Cognitive Narratology,” in Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative
Analysis, ed. David Herman (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1999),
167–194. See also: Manfred Jahn, “Frames, Preferences, and the Reading of Third-
Person Narratives: Towards a Cognitive Narratology,” Poetics Today 18, no. 4
(1997): 441–68.
3 Porter H. Abbott, “The Evolutionary Origins of the Storied Mind: Modeling the
Prehistory of Narrative Consciousness and Its Discontents,” Narrative, no. 3 (2000):

247–256.
4 David Herman, ed., Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences (Stanford, CA:
CSLI, 2003). See also: David Herman, “Introduction,” in Narrative Theory and the
Cognitive Sciences, ed. David Herman (Stanford, CA: CSLI, 2003), 1–30.
5 Fauconnier, Mappings in Thought and Language. See also: Gilles Fauconnier,
Mental Spaces: Aspects of Meaning Construction in Natural Language (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1994 [1985]).
6 Gilles Fauconnier and Eve Sweetser, Spaces, Worlds, and Grammar (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1996).

7 Fauconnier and Turner, “Conceptual Integration Networks”; Fauconnier and
Turner, The Way We Think.

34 Chapter One
by linguistic phenomena in the text, while the latter focuses on the on-line
processes of meaning construction in the course of reading literary texts.
Both these theories assume the dynamic quality of meaning, as illustrated
by Evans and Green, meaning construction is “a dynamic process whereby
linguistic units serve as prompts for an array of conceptual operations and
the recruitment of background knowledge.”1
These complex theories will be applied to Ernest Hemingway’s works
of short fiction with a view to clarifying the problem of meaning formation
when we read short literary texts. As I will discuss in Chapter 3, short stories
are attested examples of written discourse of a highly fragmented nature.
The very fact that these texts are limited in narrative space appears to
challenge writers of short fiction to employ particular narrative devices,
such as deletion or substitutions, and at the same time, short stories become
increasingly challenging in this respect for readers. My argument is that
such fragmented short stories are indeed powerful cognitive exercises, as
they stretch our sense-making abilities to their limits. Cognitive analyses of
such texts exercise one’s general cognitive abilities by making visible the
range of mental operations at play while reading. In other less challenging
types of reading, these strategies often remain only partly discovered or
rather implicitly embedded in the text (further details in Chapter 3).
With respect to the complexities of driving meaning in short fictional
narratives, the theory of blending is extremely suitable for a thorough
investigation of meaning formation. In order to recover the final meaning
of a text, readers need to go through a multi-leveled process while engaged
in the act of reading. But the final meaning does not emerge by simply
deciphering the linguistic details of the text and adding them up. This
process is mediated by a set of diverse cognitive mechanisms that can
account for the overall understanding of a narrative discourse. In what
follows, I will provide an overview of the particular mechanisms in the
mental processes of conceptual integration or blending, together with the
theoretical framework used to explain how overall meanings of short stories
can be arrived at.
The current research relevant to the application of the theory of blending
to literary texts has been fueled by the invaluable exploration of blends in
non-literary forms (Fauconnier and Turner, Fauconnier, Turner2). The cognitive
1 Vyvyan Evans and Melanie Green, Cognitive Linguistics. An Introduction

(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 162.
2 Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, “Mental Spaces. Conceptual Integration
Networks,” in Cognitive Linguistics. Basic Readings, ed. Dirk Geeraerts (Berlin:

Mouton de Gruyter, 2006), 303–371. See also: Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We
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They trotted ponderously side by side for a few moments amid the
clangor of bells, the deafening shouts of the multitude, and an ever-
increasing tempo of music.
“Sven and Loke lead the first quarter!” yelled the judges.
“Their pace increases!” cried everybody, and the excitement was at
fever heat when the elephants began to trumpet.
Before they reached the half-stake they were all galloping wildly,
and the spectators were beginning to look at each other with
blanched faces.
On the racing animals came round the turning-point, trumpeting
and bellowing furiously. Every jump shook the ground under them
like an earthquake, until the pavilion itself rocked like a ship at sea.
Fortunately, the race started near the entrance, and the panic-
stricken people were now scrambling recklessly, some through the
wide-open gates, while others clambered up for the highest seats
where they huddled together and clung to one another frantically.
On the maddened animals came, with their mouths wide open and
their swinging trunks sprinkling capsicum, copiously mixed with
saliva, over everything.
They were in a compact mass, moving with all the irresistible
velocity of an avalanche, and growing more and more terrified at
their own freedom.
Great rivers of brine poured from their bulging eyes, while their
mouths drooled as if they were on fire.
The unerring instinct which distinguishes their descendants
caused these forest monsters to fall into line one behind the other, as
they made for the open air.
Men and animals fled before them in every direction as they
thundered down the valley, stampeding everything for miles around.
Their trumpetings could be heard long after they were out of sight,
and it was easy to track them—for they beat down a solid pathway
fully a foot below the surface.
Cezardis and the keepers mounted and hastened after them. After
an hour’s hard riding, they were found, standing in the river
industriously spouting water over their unsubmerged backs.
“The heat and excitement has been too much for them,” Cezardis
said, making an ineffectual attempt to stay the panic. “There is
nothing to fear. It is only their idea of a frolic.”
To the keepers he said, “What under the sun didst thou give the
brutes?”
“A gourdful of capsicum,” answered one of them. “We knew thou
wert in the habit of slipping a pepper-pod in their mouths when thou
wouldst have them appear lively. And,” he naïvely continued, “we
knew they would be thirsty in the heat and crowd.”
“It will not be safe to take them back to the pavilion. An elephant
never forgets an injury, and they would probably demolish the whole
place if they saw it again. Thou art sufficiently punished by being
obliged to remain here on guard, while the feasting, music and
dancing goes on, to-night. I shall send thee covering and food,” he
promised, as he swung into the saddle and started back.
The massive feet of the mammoths threw up clouds of dusty sand,
thickening the air like fog, while the floor of the amphitheater looked
as if it had been newly plowed.
With their exodus the still terrified people rushed out of the
enclosure pell-mell. They pushed and crowded through the gateways
as if danger assailed them from behind.
Those in the lead made great haste after they had passed out,
dragging their children by the hands, while the little ones looked
back over their shoulders and cried as they ran along.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE FEASTING—THE DANCING AND THE
BETROTHAL CUP
The sun was inclining well toward the west, and there was a savory
smell of roasted meats, steaming vegetables and ripe fruits assailing
the olfactory nerves, and appealing strongly to the inner man—the
unchained tiger of the stomach.
The children set up an impatient clamor for something to eat, as
they caught sight of the long, low tables spread under the trees; but,
there was a decorum to be observed, which the elders rigidly
enforced.
Whole animals had been roasting through the previous night in
trenches twelve feet long, two feet wide, and two feet deep. Fires
were built in them, and when thoroughly dried out, great spits were
put in half-way to the top, and over a bed of red-hot charcoal the
meat was cooked. During this process it was moistened frequently
with spiced vinegar, and a sauce piquante of chili, with which salt
had been freely mixed.
Beef, venison and bear-meat were prepared in this way, while
rabbits, wild turkeys, geese, ducks, quail and small birds were
roasted and stewed by separate methods. Near the trenches, pots of
curry, rice and mutton were simmering over slow fires. Deep brass
cylinders, with glowing charcoal in the bottom, kept steaming
tamales ready for instant service.
There were great ash-heaps filled with sweet potatoes roasted to a
turn. Huge chafing-dishes contained beans, tomatoes, stuffed
cucumbers and stews of all kinds, while lettuce, cresses, red peppers,
radishes, leeks and onions were heaped upon the tables in profusion.
Nasturtium seeds, capers and olives were among the relishes.
Great brick ovens hid many a fruit confection and pastry, and there
were stacks of tortillas fresh from the hands of the baker. Fresh curds
and honey were in liberal allowance on each table, while large wicker
baskets groaned with their burden of ripe peaches, pears, apples,
guavas, bananas, tunas and pineapples.
On clean grass mats were water-melons, cantaloupes and grapes
while oranges, lemons, pomegranates and quinces were among the
candied and preserved fruits.
Walnuts, peanuts, filberts and pine-nuts by the bushel, were at
hand for service, while immense jars were filled with pulque,
metheglin, tequila and koumiss. These drinks were called “zadar”
meaning to spin, as the head feels after indulging in them. For the
more soberly inclined there was chocolate flavored with vanilla, and
piled high with whipped cream, served either hot or cold.
Cotton napkins and pottery ewers filled with water were beside
each earthenware plate. Despite their impatience, the children were
compelled to perform ablutions the same as their elders, before
sitting to eat. For their use, lacquerware dishes were provided.
Gay-colored silk lanterns hung from the trees, which were also
garlanded overhead with ropes of flowers, filling all gaps for the
nonce and excluding the too-searching sunlight. All made haste to
sit, while lips moved in silent thank-offerings.
The musicians played softly as Kerœcia passed rapidly along the
lines, hospitably sprinkling ashes of aloes and rosewater over the
people. Many kissed the hem of her garments, or murmured
blessings or good wishes for her health and happiness.
With a bound she was up the steps of the canopied dais upon
which the tables were laid for herself and special guests. Civil and
military officers filled the outer seats, while the priests and healers
faced them.
At the inner table, Yermah sat on the right of Kerœcia, and
Cezardis on the left. Facing them at the opposite end was Alcyesta,
with Zoyara and Ben Hu Barabe. The intervening spaces were
occupied by Setos, Rahula, Alcamayn, Ildiko, Zombra, Suravia,
Hanabusa and Mineola.
Fragrant blossoms in the form of globes, stars and crescents hung
from the blue domelike canopy, while fern brakes and loose bracken
wound around the supporting columns. Vases of silver, gold and
onyx, set with jewels, supported the daintier blooms that adorned the
table, and plates and spoons of tortoise-shells, inlaid with mother-of-
pearl, contrasted sharply with the white cloth.
Drinking-cups of polished horn, ewers of gold and silver inlaid
together, and hand basins of bright enamel, made the table both
elegant and luxurious.
As Kerœcia approached, her guests arose and joined in the shout
“Ho-ra! Ho-ra! Ho-ra!” which went up from the multitude. With a
simple gesture, Kerœcia bade them be seated. Then, with a sign of
benediction to the four cardinal points, during which time all joined
in her prayer, she seated herself, and the feast began.
For three hours they ate, drank and made merry, passing
compliments and toasts along the lines of tables, calling pretty
sentiments across to one another, until the verge of temperate
indulgence was fully reached. Long before this, the children had been
released from the table refreshed and ready for a romp under the
shade-trees. With a sigh of satisfaction, their elders waited for a
signal to rise.
“A libation to the Ineffable One, the Indivisible, I-am-I,” called Ben
Hu Barabe, standing back of his wife, holding a patera cup of ivory,
having a gold tracery over its surface, and filled to the brim with
pulque.
“Om-ah! Om-ah! Om-ah!” was the reverential response.
Ben Hu Barabe faced west, and with a graceful sweep of the arm,
poured the liquid on the ground.
“A libation to the Trinity, whose creative, destructive and
preservative aspects are everywhere manifest,” said Yermah, as he
stood behind Kerœcia, and held up a jeweled cup evenly full of
metheglin.
“Om-ah! Om-ah! Om-ah!” responded the assemblage, as Yermah
made a low obeisance to the east, and poured out the offering with a
wide splash.
“A libation to the four elements of the All Powerful—to earth, air,
fire and water—to the four parts of the heavens where His kingdoms
are,” said Cezardis, rising, followed immediately by Zoyara, Setos
and Hanabusa, each holding an onyx and silver cup brimming over
with koumiss.
Each faced a cardinal point and quickly emptied his cup.
A crash of music mingled with the “Om-ahs!” and every eye turned
expectantly toward Kerœcia.
At this anniversary each year since Kerœcia had been among them,
a betrothal cup had been set in the center of her table. It was the one
day in the year when she was privileged to choose a husband. The
marriageable men loyally showed themselves, but stood with averted
faces lest their intent gaze should embarrass and disconcert her.
Every one withdrew from the table and left her free to act.
Would she merely bow her head and follow her maidens, as she
had done before, or would she return the confidence of her people in
full? She was still standing as they left her, amid a feeling,
impressive, and intense silence.
Quickly she called:
“Alcyesta, Suravia, Mineola, intercede for me!”
Then she hastily signed to the musicians, and, soft as a breath of
Æolian harps, came the answering notes. The three priestesses
intoned in low, sweet voices, stretching out their arms in
supplication to the north, west and south. Their bodies swayed forth
and back as they brought their open hands even with their foreheads,
palms downward, and then opened their arms as wide as possible
again, repeating the process continually. Many of the women were
moved to tears as they heard the familiar strains, while some of them
mechanically joined in the chant.
Since freedom and unconsciousness are the only expressions of
modesty, why, in the name of all that is simple, sincere, and natural,
is it considered wrong for a woman to give expression to affection. As
well might it be held a shame to live and breathe because uninvited
to be born. It may be that it is for the harmony, delicacy, joy, mystery
and beauty of love that the differences of sex should be recognized in
the right of initiative. Or the notion may lie in the atavism of human
nature which stands trembling between the glory of its destiny and
the meanness of its achievement.
Kerœcia had a naïve, tender, shrinking, sensitive nature, but one in
which love clothed itself with many charms and graces. There was no
sense of original sin hanging over her head to suppress, intimidate
and pervert her love nature. She knew no reason why she should not
select a mate. With the confidence of this assurance, she picked up
the betrothal cup.
The act combined the strength of the sea, the firmness of the
mountains, the freedom of the winds, with all the shy grace of the
violet hidden by tall grasses and veiled with dew.
The cup, a pale violet stone which had been blocked out and
ground down, was supported by a slender golden stem, twisted and
set with pearls and emeralds.
Something of the import of Kerœcia’s action dawned upon Yermah
as he stood transfixed, pale and agitated, while his very life seemed
to hang upon her every movement.
It was a woman’s courage, born of love—the love of giving herself
wholly to the object of her choice. Nerved by this feeling, she came
toward him confidently, but with a timid smile and rising color, and
gave the cup into his trembling hands.
For a moment, he shrank back from her.
“O God! My oath!” was wrung from his lips. It was for an instant
only.
“But I love her with all my soul!” he cried, as he knelt and kissed
the proferred hand.
Ignorant and innocent alike of the cause of his emotion, Kerœcia
sought to reassure him.
“The Monbas will love thee, too,” she said. “Hear their assenting
shouts.”
“Atlantis and her dependencies shall worship and adore thee, as I
do. Kerœcia, my love, I shall be a loyal husband to thee.”
“As I shall be a dutiful and loving wife to thee!”
The betrothed couple were nearly swept off their feet by the
crowds which surged around them. The Monbas and Azes embraced
each other, called one another brother, and pledged fealty to the new
alliance.
Thus was the compact ratified.
Every one was anxious to talk the matter over with his neighbor.
So, they all sought their homes in animated groups, leaving behind a
scene of disorder. Napkins were scattered wherever the last ablutions
were performed. Ewers and cups with their contents had been
frequently overturned. Fragments of food, cooked and uncooked,
some untouched and others partly eaten, were abandoned by the
sated appetite, and left without further thought, until hunger should
recall their excellence.
In a short time the streets were silent and deserted, the remaining
hours of the day being devoted to a siesta indoors. No one issued
from his house again until night unpinned a black curtain and rolled
it down over the earth.
When God had hung His lanterns in the sky, the people came
together again. They went back to the pavilion which was now a blaze
of light from the many flambeaux stuck into brass urns around the
high walls, augmented by hundreds of silk lanterns festooned on
wires stretching across to the center pole. There was breeze enough
to keep the flags in motion, and to cause the lights to flicker fitfully,
adding to the fairy-like beauty of the scene.
The character of the music had entirely changed. The kettle-drums
were muffled and beaten with the fingers only. Instead of the blare of
trumpets, there were harps such as the Yaqui Indians use, and
differing but little from the modern instruments.
Slabs of black and white marble covered the ring floor, save where
a wide passageway had been left on all sides for use of the people in
seating themselves. The pavilion had been transformed into a bower
of roses and artificial trees.
Under a floral canopy, Kerœcia, dressed in white and silver gauze,
sat with one of the judges on either side of her. She was waiting to
crown the victors. The musicians made victory, love and triumph
their theme, as Yermah, escorted by Ben Hu Barabe, approached and
knelt to receive a crown of lilies and a palm.
“Rise in thy majesty, bearer of the victorious palm! Go forth and
renew thy triumphs, until the sun comes again to strengthen thy lion
heart. Peace be with thee!”
“Hear me, O Priestess! Grant thy servant leave to encircle thy
slender fingers with a set of rings made for thee, having the virtues of
the planets and sent with the blessings of the people of Tlamco,”
entreated Yermah, kneeling.
“Thy wishes and those of thy people are law unto me,” responded
Kerœcia, giving him her hand.
Alcamayn presented him with a cushion of purple silk on which lay
the seven rings.
“A sapphire set in gold, worn on the first finger, brings the blessing
of the sun,” said the Dorado, slipping the ring on her finger. “Beside
it I place a bloodstone set in tin, to enlist Jupiter in thy welfare; the
cautious guardianship of Saturn is in the turquoise and lead, with
which I encircle thy middle finger; Venus, the goddess of love,
governs the third finger, and for an amulet demands an amethyst set
in copper; the moon inclines the heart of thy people toward thee, and
will bless thee with children, if a diamond in silver setting is also
placed on this finger.”
Yermah lingered a moment over his task, and looked up at
Kerœcia for approval.
“This curiously wrought band contains a magnet, and is intended
for the little finger, the throne of Mercury, the wise one, who stands
as an outer sentinel to guard and strengthen love,” he continued.
“The seat of will-power is in the thumb. Let this serpent of iron
with an emerald eye bring to thee the warrior spirit of the planet
Mars, subdued and sweetened by the quality of Venus. May the All-
Seeing Eye supply thy inner vision, and may every craving of thy
heart be satisfied.”
“Then must thou express the gratitude oppressing me, when next
thy voice is heard in the Llama city,” replied Kerœcia, as she
motioned Yermah to rise.
Wreaths of bay-tree, of laurel in berry (whence the term
baccalaureate comes when it is given to young physicians), olive,
myrtle, and nasturtium vines were bestowed and proudly worn by
men who had contested for them earlier in the day. To the less
successful, were given ribbons of red, blue, and green.
The whole scene was animated and brilliant. The gayly dressed
throng pushed and elbowed one another, paying little or no attention
to the award of prizes, in their desire to see and to be seen.
The dances were about to begin, and there was a bevy of pretty
girls ready to do their share. Up the steps of the pavilion, dancing on
their way, came boys dressed as birds and butterflies, in garments of
blue, green, and yellow plumes. They ascended into the artificial
trees, moving from branch to branch, pretending to sip dew from the
flowers. Then came the special guests, who were garbed like gods,
having blow-guns in their hands, with which they feigned to shoot
the birds.
Kerœcia invited the visitors into her bower, and gave them a
mixture of rose-leaves and tobacco to smoke.
Immediately the familiar strains of the harvest dances were heard,
and the people began to clap their hands in accompaniment. From
the four cardinal points a line of dancers was forming, composed of
young girls dressed as fairies. The sylphs came from the east, dressed
in sheer white, made short and very full, with graduated spangles of
gold coming out like a sunburst from the gold band at the waist.
Orange and jasmine blossoms wreathed their heads. They danced
quickly up to the pole in the center, and took the yellow streamer
hanging from the immense flower parasol suspended over the top.
Joining hands, they waited for their companions.
Next came the salamanders, in parti-colored dresses of flame-red
and black, so thickly spangled with mica that in the flaring light they
looked as if sparks had been showered over them. Their long black
hair was full of diamond powder, and they had red roses and
carnations on their heads. The same dainty steps, with the hems of
their stiff skirts in their fingers, brought them to the center where
they secured a red streamer.
Then came the undines, the water-sprites, dressed in Nile-green
gauze liberally trimmed with silver, while their girdles were of silver
filigree, shaped like serpents. Their fluffy white hair was crowned
with lemon and citron blooms, and agraffes of silver were also worn.
They came from the west, and selected a white streamer.
From the north came queer little hunchbacked creatures, wearing
conical caps which terminated in sharp points. These gnomes
sparkled with mineral wealth, in jeweled bodices and caps, while
their skirts were earth-colored gauze, brightened by iridescent
sequins and embroideries. These dancers picked up the remaining
black streamer.
Slowly the columns began to circle around the pole, going faster
and faster until the streamers were wound around it, and as often
reversing the process. Forming a square, they began a basket weave,
during which time little children ran forth and back to represent the
shuttle.
With a grand apotheosis of the seasons, during which each group
danced separately, and, finally, all together, they bowed, threw kisses
to Kerœcia, and ran off the platform.
A few minutes afterward, each square of marble was occupied by a
young woman dressed as a priestess, in long, voluminous robes of
pale pink, lavender, blue, and white, with double and single key
patterns marked out in black. The necks, the bottoms of the skirts,
and the edges of the sleeves were so ornamented. Gold bands coiled
around the back part of the head and held the long hair in place.
Sandals, having pointed toes curling well up over the foot, and laced
together with gold cords, completed their costumes.
The dancers were placed so as to form a representation like the
maze of Dædalus, and each whirled separately and at such a rate as
to confuse the beholder.
Ildiko took a parti-colored handkerchief and challenged Alcamayn
to follow her. The dancers kept up the whirling wherever she was,
while the others held their interlaced hands high over their heads
and danced in an indescribable labyrinth.
In and out darted Ildiko, with a tantalizing fling of the
handkerchief, taxing all Alcamayn’s ingenuity to follow, especially
when the spectators sought to mislead him by an incessant clamor of
gratuitous advice over and above the hand-clapping. Finally, he
succeeded in securing a corner of the square, which he retained,
dancing with Ildiko up in front of the pavilion.
As soon as Kerœcia recognized them, the whole group prostrated
themselves before her, and then rising simultaneously, executed a
serpentine dance, in which all the colors were beautifully blended.
As the music ceased, the crowd began moving toward the gates,
and soon after, quiet reigned supreme.
Yermah gained courage from the unfailing kindness shown him
everywhere. It loosed his tongue, and he longed to talk of his hopes
and plans. Lover-like, he was tormented with curiosity concerning
the minutiæ of Kerœcia’s life; so he lingered the greater portion of
the next day at her house.
These two indulged in the dearest, sweetest possible exchange of
confidences. The revelations they made amounted to nothing in
themselves, yet were priceless treasures to the recipients.
Halting sentences, eloquent silences, phrases broken by kisses
sweeter than honey of Hybla, explanations emphasized by a
caressing touch of the hand, tones and accents whose inner meaning
was made plain by a love-lit eye, all the sweet nothings talked heart-
to-heart by lovers gave them several hours of unalloyed happiness.
“I am of the same descent as thou art, my beloved,” said Kerœcia,
as Yermah drew her head toward him, and kissed the hair where it
parted on her forehead.
“How art thou related to me except by the silken cords of
affection?” he asked, ready to indulge her for the sake of hearing her
talk.
“Because years ago, my ancestry came from Atlantis.”
“Very true, the Ians were originally from Atlantis, but they have
long made war on Nimrod’s descendants.”
“Oppression and ill-use drove them to rebellion. They were
forbidden to worship as I do, and for this reason they set themselves
free.”
“I went directly to Nineveh, a callow youth, ungainly, beardless
and without discretion—”
“Wouldst thou have me quarrel with thee?” demanded Kerœcia, as
she held her hand tightly over Yermah’s mouth. He shook his head,
and with his hands imprisoned the audacious member.
“Then thou must not abuse my property,” she continued, with an
engaging pout.
“Wouldst thou have loved me then?” he asked. Being satisfied with
her reply, he added: “There I performed the first labor of initiation.”
“What meanest thou, by initiation? Is it something Akaza teaches
thee?”
“Initiation is a task imposed upon me by the Brotherhood of the
White Star in my father’s court. When I have finished the labors I
shall be of the Brotherhood myself. This is necessary for a Grand
Servitor.”
“Tell me of thy journeyings,” she said, nestling close beside him,
yet with a coyness and reserve all her own. “Thou hast traveled very
far.”
“The second year was spent at[8]Memphis, Egypt, where I
performed the second labor. Then I went among our colonists in
[8]
Phœnicia; thence to the [8]Etruscans, where I learned to work in
metals; then among the [8]Kelts, where I learned bow-craft; thence to
the [8]Vikings and the land of the [8]Basques. Returning to Poseidon’s
kingdom, I set sail for the land of the [8]Incas; and from there I came
to Tlamco, the last outlying colony of the [8]Toltecs, one of the three
main tributaries to the Grand Servitor Poseidon. Art thou satisfied?”
he asked.
“Not quite. Hast thou loved no one all these years?”
“Yes; and very much,” confidently assented Yermah.
Kerœcia shrank back as if a blow had been dealt her. Everything
swam before her, and she was faint and wan.
“Whom?” she gasped.
“Myself,” said Yermah, holding her tightly. “Art thou jealous?”
“Not now,” she replied, with a look that enchanted her admirer.
“Wilt thou hear other confessions? I can accuse myself of much
more.”
“And compel me to love thee the more for them all. Thou shalt
leave me sufficient mind for besetting affairs,” answered Kerœcia.
“Wouldst thou have me for thy slave?”
“No. But I would be thine.”
“Lend thy confidence fully, that I may worship where thou art
pleased, and abhor that which offends thee.”
“That which I value most of all my possessions is this distaff given
me by my mother,” said Kerœcia, bringing forward a slender strip of
bamboo, not much larger than a darning-needle, lightly weighted
with pellets of clay.
It had a jeweled handle and a wheel of hardwood, polished and set
with mother-of-pearl. A tiny shell served for a socket, should the
weight of the spindle prove too heavy for the gossamer threads used.
“Wilt thou spin?” asked her companion, placing a seat for her.
With girlish eagerness and gratified pride, Kerœcia sat down so
intent upon a display of dexterity and skill that she was unconscious
of the fact that her soft clinging skirts were tightly drawn over one leg
the entire length, and high enough to reveal the ankle and instep to
good advantage. With the other foot she set the treadle going, and
soon her shapely arms were following the flying shuttle. The well-
poised head, the long, slender throat, and the regular rise and fall of
a perfect bosom helped to complete the poetry of her motions, and
Yermah feasted his eyes while she worked.
Glancing upward by chance, Kerœcia caught the expression of his
face, but was by no means displeased because she saw desire
mirrored there.
Who can resist the intoxication of the senses?—especially their
instinctive pledge, which does not rise to the mental plane, but is
merely a matter of exquisite feeling on both sides.
In his agitation, Yermah busied himself clumsily with the spider-
web threads, and soon had them hopelessly entangled. He was so
genuinely distressed when they broke that his companion hastily put
the wheel away and substituted an instrument like the zither, only
much larger, played with thimbles of tortoise-shell fastened to the
fingers.
Kerœcia sang a plaintive love-song to her own accompaniment.
When she had finished, Yermah sat down beside her and slipped his
arm around her waist.
“Something in thy song makes me sad. Tell me again that thou wilt
be happy as my wife.”
She patted his cheek tenderly and gave the assurance.
“And wilt thou pray that children may bless and sweeten our lives
together?”
Kneeling beside him, she promised. Seeing that he was still in a
serious mood, she said soothingly:
“Let not ungentle doubt knit thy brow. For all time, and for all
eternity, I give myself to thee absolutely and without reserve.”
“And I bind my soul to cherish and love thee always. Thou art a
jewel imbedded in my very heart’s core. Hast thou a wish in my
power to grant?”
She stroked his temples gently for a moment, and then said:
“Thou art both skilled and learned, and I delight in thy
achievements. Hast thou shown all thy quality? Thou art as modest
as a violet, but thou hast said that thou wilt do much to please me.
Make me to know thy handiwork, and it shall be to me above rubies.”
It was such artless flattery that Yermah promised with swelling
pride and an inward conviction that his every thought and wish
would find a quick response and ready sympathy in her
companionship.
After this they talked but little, much of their time being spent in
the strange silent awe of perfect love.
With a pretty show of confidence which thrilled Yermah, Kerœcia
lifted his disengaged hand and carried it to its fellow, which was yet
about her waist, and of her own accord added slightly to the
pressure. Baffled by the subtle change of expression which
accompanied this movement, Yermah asked quickly:
“What is it, loved one?”
“I feel securely sheltered from all the world,” she said, “when thy
strong arms enfold me. I wonder if thou canst realize what a
complete haven I feel that I have in thee?”
“Not more than I find in thy sweet mind, thy pure soul, and thy
warm heart,” he answered, as he kissed her forehead, eyes and lips.
He had taken her fully into his protecting care. She leaned on him
without restraint and suffered her eyelids to droop for a moment.
Gradually both of them yielded to a sense of weariness—a reaction
inevitable from the tension of the previous days.
Drowsiness came on apace, but sleep claimed Yermah an instant
only. With a tenderness akin to holiness, he occupied himself with
Kerœcia’s comfort. He was completely subdued by her helplessness,
and she was in every sense sacred to him.
“She trusts me,” he whispered softly, as he observed the relaxation
of her pose.
In his gentleness and solicitude, there was that incipient quality
indicated which would make him a kind and indulgent father.
She was to him still such a wonderful being that he was intensely
interested in her personality. Curious as a boy with a new toy, he
longed to arouse her, yet hesitated to do so. He felt diffident about
touching her. Before he could decide what to do, she had opened her
eyes with a start.
“Beloved, I thought thou hadst left me,” she murmured, only half-
awake.
“No. I am still beside thee. We have both been in dreamland, but
thou art more laggard than I.”
“I am much refreshed,” she said, apologetically. “Thou wilt pardon
my neglect?”
“I, too, am renewed,” he answered, stroking her hair affectionately.
“Thou wilt not forget me when thou art engrossed with affairs of
state?” she asked wistfully, as they stood together in the twilight
taking leave of each other.
He was to go away at daybreak the following morning, and she
clung to him in longing farewell.
“Remember this,” he answered, taking her face in his hands, and
looking deep into her eyes: “Nothing can for one moment blot out
thy dear image. The first thought of the day, the last thought of the
night is of thee.”
“Thou art my whole desire and inspiration. Memory serves thee
faithfully. May the energy of the cosmos conserve thy strength of
purpose, thy health and happiness,” was Kerœcia’s reply.
“To Him who was in the beginning, and shall endure to the end
without mutation or change, I commend my sweet love. May angels
of content hover over thee, Kerœcia, my treasure!”
A tender, lingering embrace, a shower of kisses on eyelids and lips,
and then the princess stood alone, straining her eyes into the dark,
trying to retain a glimpse of her departing lover.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE JEWEL BOOK AND WHAT CAME OF IT
On the way home, and for days after his arrival at Tlamco, Yermah
thought of what he should do to please Kerœcia. She had said that
she wanted to know of all his handiwork and achievements, so he
studied out a plan to fulfill her wishes.
Being a master in metallurgy, a skillful artificer, and an expert
diamond lapidary, he decided to make her a tablet of stones, which
should be a book of his life, confident that she understood the
language of the genii, since her father’s court copied the letters used
in their cuneiform writing from the arrow-head crystals imprisoned
in sapphires.
Yermah’s belief was that gold, silver and the precious stones had
but one foundation in nature. They were simply augmentative
thought, purified and perfected through the operation of magnetic
life. This power was invisible and unattainable under ordinary
circumstances, and unknown to all except the alchemist.
With him all yellow gems and gold were appropriate to wear for
Sunday, either to draw down propitious influences or to avert
antagonistic effects.
On Monday, pearls and white stones (not diamonds) were worn,
because this is the day of the moon, the second power in nature.
Tuesday, the day of Mars, claimed rubies and all crystallization of
a fiery luster.
Wednesday was the day of the turquoise, sapphire and all species
of stones which seem to reflect the blue vault of heaven, and to imply
the lucent azure of the spiritual atmosphere where the sylphs dwell—
those elementals who are always striving to communicate with
mortals, because they desire immortality.
Thursday demanded amethysts, and richly colored stones of
sanguine tint, because the day is correlated to the male divine
sacrifice.
Friday, Venus’s day, had emeralds and reigned over all green
stones.
On Saturday, diamonds, signifying the great deep, were worn,
because Saturn’s rule is death to the physical, but birth to the
spiritual nature.
“The first effect abides as long as the thing remains,” said the
Dorado to Alcamayn, as they examined and assorted some uncut
turquoises brought from the mines in the Cerrillos Mountains, in
New Mexico, then a flourishing Toltec settlement.
Opals came from Zinapan, pearls from La Paz, emeralds from
Peru, and diamonds from Brazil, while the rubies had been lately
sent from Montana by Orondo. There were beautiful sapphires from
the Caucasus, secured by barter with Kerœcia’s people.
“All things material have a proper form,” answered Alcamayn,
“and are subject to certain conditions. Gems, being material, derive
virtue from a specific shape, and are likewise subject to the influence
of the planets.”
“I require four stones for my purpose, and will see to it that the
symbol engraved has the same quality as the stone itself, in order
that its strength may be doubled,” continued Yermah.
“To be efficacious, this book must be made by election,” rejoined
Alcamayn. “Each stone must be worked at the hour its particular
planet’s position is strongest. This will prolong the good aspect
forever, unless the stone is broken.”
“The sapphire reflects the blue of heaven, and belongs to the Bull,”
explained Yermah, critically examining some polished gems, having
arrow-head crystals standing out in startling distinctness in the
prismatic colors. Sometimes they appeared in clouds, again in fields,
shifting their scenes as often as he changed the focus. “This shall be
placed in a square of gold.”
“The house of the Twins requires an agate, which is the natal stone
of the priestess Kerœcia,” observed Alcamayn, handing the Dorado a
beautifully marked moss-agate.
“Let that be placed in the gold below the sapphire. The emerald
pictures the depth of the sea, and is the delight of its parent, the
Light Bringer. It shall be in the third place.”
“The first gem for the blue square is a topaz,” said Alcamayn,
“which rules the Lion, thy house of nativity.”
“This pale pink coral, with its delicate leaf-work, shall be its
companion. It is of our common country, and will out-tongue my
feeble words in its own behalf,” the Dorado continued.
“Here is a dewdrop laden with sunbeams,” said the little jeweler
enthusiastically, as he opened a square of maguey fiber, and
disclosed a first-water brilliant.
“Equilibrated love could have no better exponent,” assented
Yermah, sharing his enthusiasm. “The bow and dart are here at rest
in the sign Libra, where the Lord of Day begins his journey through
the nether world. This sparkling thing shall find rest beside the coral
branch fresh from the brine of Atlantis.”
“The scarlet block must have a fiery opal, and I have here an
exquisite finding, recently brought from the Toltec kingdom,”
exclaimed the jeweler.
“This shall typify the sting of the scorpion, which is the separation
forced upon us. Its changing hues shall be to her a sign that three
lunations more complete my exile, and then comes joyous union. Put
this in the first place, and with it a turquoise for the present time,
when all my thought is of thee,” he continued, unmindful of
Alcamayn’s presence. “The ruby mirrors my imprisoned soul, which
awaits release into the sunshine of thy love.”
Alcamayn was looking over a handful of garnets. Finally he found a
suitable one, and laid it at the top of the purple square.
“This shall be the opening page,” said Yermah; “and I will so
cunningly fashion it that Kerœcia shall go with renewed zest from
one chapter to another. When she has my whole life spread out
before her, I shall conceal the spring, so that she may not close it
again. It will be to her a pledge of constancy.”
“I like not this amethyst,” commented Alcamayn, “but we have no
other stone large enough.”
“The sign of the fishes is well represented by a pearl,” rejoined
Yermah. “Hast thou black and white gems sufficient in size?”
“Here is one of each, ovum-shaped and perfect. Thou canst fashion
the fishes of the amethyst and set the two pearls between.”
“A square of jasper gives promise of fulfillment. As the verdant
earth responds to the warming rays of the sun newly come out of the
region of cold and darkness, so man’s heart is warmed into life by
love. Canst thou make room for me among the lapidaries?” he asked,
turning to Alcamayn in direct appeal. “I desire to work with these
materials myself.”
“Wilt thou grant me leave to make thee comfortable here? Thou
mayst command me in all things,” said Alcamayn, proud of his
knowledge of the craft, and flattered because he had been consulted
in a matter so personal and delicate.
They were in the treasure-room of Iaqua, and it was not long
before Yermah had a temporary work-shop improvised in a corner
where he had a good light, but was screened from observation.
In addition to a copper wheel and the necessary tools, there was a
vessel filled with a carbonate of a brownish-green, opaque color,
porous like pumice, and as hard as a diamond, which he used for
polishing and cutting. An emery-wheel and a ewer of olive oil were
also at hand.
The Dorado spent a portion of each day in this work-shop, and
while employed at his labors of love, he either hummed or whistled
the plaintive melody Kerœcia had sung for him.
The gold plates which Yermah had so dexterously contrived were
put together on the principle of a screen, in four sections, containing
three stones each, set solid. The first strip was of purple enamel, the
second gold, the third blue, the fourth red. At the four cardinal points
were squares of gold, with stone intaglios.
When folded, the east and west formed a clasp, which had a spring
concealed on the reverse side.
As soon as Kerœcia received the tablet of stones, she dispatched

Ben Hu Barabe and Alcyesta to Tlamco with a pair of golden eagles
for Yermah. These birds were carefully trained in falconry, and were
highly prized because of their sagacity, courage and skill. She also
sent him the filmy muslin square with its broken and tangled

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A Cognitive Approach to Ernest

Hemingway s Short Fiction 1st Edition

Dear Papa: The Letters of Patrick and Ernest Hemingway

In Our Time 2nd Edition Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway s Guns The Sporting Arms of Ernest Hemingway

Conrad s Short Fiction Lawrence Graver

Short Fiction 1st Edition Poul Anderson

Short Fiction 1st Edition Voltairine De Cleyre

Short Fiction 1st Edition Voltairine De Cleyre

Hearing Kyriotic Sonship A Cognitive and Rhetorical

This book first published 2021

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Copyright © 2021 by Gabriela Tucan

ISBN (10): 1-5275-6762-1

Chapter One .............................................................................................. 16

Chapter Two ............................................................................................. 63

Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 94

3.4 Short stories and counterfactual thinking: an introduction ......... 109

Chapter Four ........................................................................................... 125

Chapter Five ........................................................................................... 192

5.6 Compression of vital relations: A Very Short Story .................... 251

Conclusions ............................................................................................ 256

Bibliography ........................................................................................... 268

Over the past several years, I have taught a course in communication

It is something of a commonplace today that natural scientists are only able

the Humanities (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2012).

abolishing them would mean disregarding meaningful cultural phenomena.

Cambridge University Press, 1959).

Other seminal work in interdisciplinarity has been done by Slingerland.1

and Action in Memory, Language and Thinking (Cambridge: Cambridge University

representation of the external world arises from everyday embodied

Lakoff, “The Brain’s Concepts: The Role of the Sensory-motor System in

autonomous parts of the brain but from bodily experience.1 Cognitive

Review 9 (2002): 625–636.

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991).

research background, even scholars1 attracted by interdisciplinary work

1 Marie-Laure Ryan, “Narratology and Cognitive Science: A Problematic Relation,”

Meeting of Literature and Cognitive Science,” in Cognitive Literary Science.

Approaches and Applications (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2012).

OH: Ohio State University Press, 2006).

(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993).

Cambridge University Press, 2001).

and Aesthetics (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1996).

volume coordinated by Zunshine,1 the common thread is the contributors’

1 Zunshine, Cognitive Literary Studies.

Cognitive Approaches to Identity and Empathy,” in The Oxford Handbook of

“cognitive poetics offers a means of discussing interpretation whether it is

1 Stockwell, Cognitive Poetics, 5.

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

1 Head, The Modernist Short Story, 20.

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978).

(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1975).

Ernest Hemingway1 attests to the elation of Hemingway’s status and also

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

therefore examine the mind in action of Hemingway’s characters to prove

1 Marco Bernini, “The Opacity of Fictional Minds: Transparency, Interpretative