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Text: Origins and Reference

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Nicolae Babuts
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Abstract

The conflict between formalist thinking and theories that view texts in their historical contexts serves as a starting point for the introduction of a cognitive view of literature. From this perspective language has full referential powers. The “referent” splits into two entities, however: things-in-themselves (in their material identity), which we cannot know, and things in their coded form, which are perceptually accessible. Readers' mnemonic potentials, a consequence of the bonding of perception and language, are adduced to show that texts originate in past interpretations of other texts and in personal experience and that consequently social forces and historical events are subsumed in the individual memory. In the cognitive light, memory becomes the ultimate metaphor, and the epistemological claim of realism regains its compelling force.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 107 , Issue 1: Special Topic: Theory of Literary History , January 1992 , pp. 65 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1992

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