JLS 39 (2010), 127 0341-7638/10/0391

DOI 10.1515/jlse.2010.001 Walter de Gruyter

Naturalizing the unnatural: A view from
blending theory
MONIKA FLUDERNIK
Abstract
In Towards a Natural Narratology (1996), I presented the process of nat-
uralization as a strategy of converting not-naturally-occurring storytelling
scenarios into familiarized models of narration. In order to map this pro-
cess, this paper resorts to the most recent version of blending theory (con-
ceptual integration networks) as proposed by Mark Turner and Gilles Fau-
connier. The analysis will be prefaced by a few framing remarks on the
cognitive approach in the study of narrative and will conclude with an
outlook on further possible applications of blending theory.
1
1. The cognitive approach: Cognitive poetics, narrative and cognitive
narratology
In recent years, it has become fashionable to speak of a cognitive turn in
various areas of the humanities. Several journals have undertaken to pub-
lish special issues on the subject; for instance Poetics Today brought out a
hefty, nearly 400-page long issue entitled The Cognitive Turn? A Debate
on Interdisciplinarity (24.2, 2003), as well as publishing an issue on Lit-
erature and the Cognitive Revolution (23.1, 2002). See also issues of
Cognitive Linguistics (11.34, 2000), Style (36.3, 2003), the European
Journal of English Studies (EJES 9.2, 2005), the Journal of Pragmatics
(37.10, 2005) and Language and Literature (15.1, 2006). Arguably, the
cognitive approach has currently become the leading paradigm in linguis-
tics. It started out with frame and prototype theory, expanded into cogni-
tive metaphor and integrational network (blending) theory, and has been
taking over almost all areas of linguistics with applications to syntax, mor-
phology, phonetics and phonemics (see, e.g., Dresslers grammaticaliza-
tion model, work on prepositions, scripts and semantics in general, all the
2 Monika Fludernik
way to construction grammar). The cognitive approach could be seen as
providing a hard-science core to pragmatics, which in a sense had devel-
oped away from more abstract and mathematical models in linguistics.
Current cognitive studies in linguistics are returning with a vengeance to
increasingly complex models and a heavy emphasis on statistics, corpus
studies and empirical testing.
In literature and literary theory, cognitive approaches have been promi-
nent for quite some time. Indeed, one could argue that the Russian For-
malist notion of defamiliarization (ostranenie) anticipates later cognitive
concerns. Much earlier than others, literary critics like Moshe Ron, Benja-
min Harshav (Hrushovski) and Reuven Tsur began to absorb the lessons of
frame theory and other cognitive approaches in psychology, and to turn to
their application to the reading process. Framing, primacy and recency ef-
fects and stylistic management of foregrounding and backgrounding began
to play a role in a wide range of work, particularly work focussing on
narrative (see Harshav 1976; Ron 1979; Tsur 2008 [1992]). Jkel (1999)
proposes that cognitive metaphor theory has been largely anticipated by
nineteenth-century German linguists and by Harald Weinrich.
As Peter Stockwells now almost classic Cognitive Poetics (2002) de-
monstrates, the cognitive approach uses a large variety of different cogni-
tive models and is applicable to all genres, to stylistic, grammatical, reader-
response-related and genre-related issues. Gavins and Steens Cognitive
Poetics in Practice (2003) complements Stockwells volume and adds new
items to the list of applications. Besides expanding on the gure/ground
pattern and the central importance of prototypes, Gavins and Steen in-
clude essays on deixis, syntax, cognitive metaphor theory, possible worlds
theory, text worlds, parable, and plot reversals. (Stockwells list of genres
had included parable and allegory, and Michael Sinding in a number of
articles [2002a, 2004, 2005] has expanded this analysis of allegory to in-
clude satire as well as considerations of genre itself.)
Narratology, in its overlap with stylistics and cognitive linguistics, has
also been extensively inuenced by models derived from cognitive studies.
Foremost among those working with a cognitive toolkit is Manfred Jahn,
whose articles (e.g., 1997, 1999, 2003) applied insights from the distinc-
tion between primacy/recency effects to the narrative reading process. I
myself favored a constructivist approach, and eventually started to apply
prototype theory to the analysis of narrative viewpoint (see Fludernik
1996). David Herman, in a series of articles, an edited volume and a major
monograph, has been moving into a cognitive narratology and is exten-
sively applying aspects of a variety of cognitive paradigms to the study of
narrative, particularly to production and reception issues (Herman 1997,
2002, 2003, 2007, 2009). Besides Herman, a number of other scholars
Naturalizing the unnatural 3
have recently left their mark on narratology by focusing on cognitive is-
sues (see especially Spolsky 2001; Richardson and Steen 2002; Hogan
2003a, 2003b; Richardson and Spolsky 2004; Zunshine 2006, 2008; and
Abbott 2009.)
Of particular interest are studies that have proposed what they call a
cognitive poetics since these promise a fuller analysis of the relationship
between cognitive studies and literature. As we have seen above, Stock-
well (2002) and Gavins and Steen (2003) survey a eld in which several
types of cognitive methods and insights are applied to literary texts and is-
sues in literary studies. Their spectrum is extremely broad both in its range
of cognitive models and in the extent of applications. As with these two
books, a strong eclecticism can be observed also in the work of Lisa
Zunshine and some of the members of the Stanford group on cognitive
research (John Bender, Jonathan Kramnick, Natalie Phillips, Blakey
Vermeule). All of these applications to literature argue that the way we
write or read reects features of our cognitive predispositions, or can be
explained by resorting to an analysis of the mind. The types of cognitive
theory involved are, however, very diverse and perhaps not compatible.
Scholars working in metaphor theory and integrational networks are
clearly concerned with different processes from those scholars looking at
the dynamics of plot construction or the interplay of genre and cognition.
In alignment with these quite heterogeneous uses of the term cognitive,
denitions of a cognitive poetics likewise vary. Thus, Reuven Tsur denes
cognitive poetics as an update on the semiotics of literature: Cognitive
poetics, as practiced in the present work, offers cognitive theories that sys-
tematically account for the relationship between the structure of literary
texts and their perceived effects (1992

[2008]: 1). Tsurs work is reso-
lutely empirical and tries to account for why literature means what it
means to us. By contrast, Peter Stockwells denition (2002), besides un-
derscoring Tsurs explanatory focus on our reading of literature, addition-
ally emphasizes the role of context and the similarities between language
use in literature and non-literary texts:
It [cognitive poetics] offers a means of describing and delineating different types
of knowledge and belief in a systematic way, and a model of how to connect
these matters of circumstance and use to the language of the literature. It also
demonstrates the continuities between creative literary language and creative
language in everyday use. In short, cognitive poetics takes context seriously.
Furthermore, it has a broad view of context that encompasses both social and
personal circumstances. (Stockwell 2002: 4)
Stockwell goes on to distinguish the literary and aesthetic focus of cogni-
tive poetics from cognitive linguistics:
4 Monika Fludernik
In my view, treating literature only as another piece of data would not be cogni-
tive poetics at all. This is simply cognitive linguistics. [ . . . ] As I said, taking
the cognitive turn seriously means more than simply being interested in the
psychology of reading. It means a thorough re-evaluation of all of the categories
with which we understand literary reading and analysis. In doing this, however,
we do not have to throw away all of the insights from literary criticism and lin-
guistic analysis that have been drawn out in the past. Many of those patterns of
understanding form very useful starting points for cognitive poetic investigation.
(Stockwell 2002: 6)
Stockwell is therefore aiming at reconceptualizing the toolbox of literary
criticism by retuning it with a cognitive tuning fork. The thrust of his anal-
yses (and of Gavins and Steens) therefore tends to dissipate the unitary
model that Tsur is envisaging because it turns to individual aspects and is-
sues within literary analysis and attempts to reevaluate them from the per-
spective of cognitive linguistics. Even Stockwell admits in the context of
his analysis that
[T]here is no direct link between linguistic form and the categories of cognitive
grammar since each slot can be seen as being prototypically related to all the
others. Furthermore, the gure and ground distinction can be construed in many
different ways by readers. This would seem to suggest that the rules of cogni-
tive grammar are different from linguistic rules as they are traditionally under-
stood, in that they do not absolutely constrain linguistic expressions. If you treat
the prototypical models produced in cognitive grammar as producing a sort of
most natural reading, where does this leave the status of other, interesting read-
ings? (Stockwell 2002: 67)
It is, therefore, worth pondering whether the term cognitive poetics should
not be replaced by cognitive literary studies, as Brandt and Brandt (2005)
suggest in a special issue of EJES:
Perhaps cognitive literary studies is a more apt term for the enterprise, as sug-
gested by the title of the present issue. Alternatively, cognitive poetics could be
viewed as a specialized branch within cognitive literary studies, dealing speci-
cally with analyses of poems. However, it seems sensible to include in our no-
tion of poetics all literary forms of writing, in the spirit of the etymological
root of the word (thus, the Greek word poiesis, creation, refers to all creative
uses of language). Adopting this latter view, the term cognitive poetics refers to
cognitively-oriented generalizations on creative (read: literary) writing as such
and can be used interchangeably with cognitive literary studies to indicate the
study of literary creations in a cognitive perspective. (Brandt and Brandt 2005:
124)
There are other overlaps as well, especially with semiotics and Paul
Werths text world theory (1999) or with contextual frame theory:
Naturalizing the unnatural 5
Contextual frame theory is a cognitive poetic theory because it shows that texts
can be studied not only for their style, but also to provide clues to the amount of
work that a reader has to do to process the language. In this respect, a detailed
analysis of a text can reveal the extent to which a readers knowledge, beliefs,
assumptions and inference-making ability are necessary to supplement (and in
some cases override) the words on the page. Contextual frame theory is similar
to Text World Theory (Werth 1999), but it focuses particularly on how contexts
within ctional worlds are constructed. In the plot reversals discussed in this
chapter, readers and/or characters are led up the garden path, making erroneous
inferences about a context because key information is omitted or because they
are placed in a position where they wrongly assess a situation. (Emmott 2003:
146)
Tsurs global theoretical horizons, on the other hand, are taken up by Mar-
garet Freeman (2000) in her extremely insightful paper Poetry and the
Scope of Metaphor: Toward a Cognitive Theory of Literature. Unfortu-
nately, owing to its publication in a volume on metaphor and metonymy,
in which it is not really a good t, this essay has been much neglected.
Freemans main argument is that blending theory provides a unique model
for the analysis of how we process literary texts:
I therefore propose a theory of literature that is grounded in cognitive linguistic
theory: namely, that literary texts are the products of cognizing minds and their
interpretations the products of other cognizing minds in the context of the physi-
cal and sociocultural worlds in which they have been created and are read. This
is the argument that underlies this paper. The theory I call cognitive poetics is a
powerful tool for making explicit our reasoning processes and for illuminating
the structure and content of literary texts. It provides a theory of literature that is
both grounded in the language of literary texts and grounded in the cognitive
linguistic strategies readers use to understand them. (Freeman 2000: 253254)
Freeman in particular demonstrates how the poems she analyses reect
mapping structures that are accessed by readers; she also notes the draw-
backs or limitations of non-cognitive literary analysis because it fails to
show up the systematic structures behind our reading of metaphor (and
literature in general). She ends by suggesting that different readings of
poems can be considered members of a radial category, with some read-
ings being more prototypical, or central, to the category than others (278,
n. 7).
Of special interest as a caveat is the lively exchange on the cognitive
revolution between the editors of the Poetics Today 23.1 (2002) special
issue, Alan Richardson and Francis F. Steen, and Hans Adler and Sabine
Gross in Poetics Today 23.2, which in turn led to a second special issue
of Poetics Today on the cognitive turn (24.2, 2003), edited by Meir
Sternberg. The criticism voiced in this special issue, especially by Meir
6 Monika Fludernik
Sternberg, concerns the failed interdisciplinarity of cognitivism. However,
what I would like to emphasize here is, rather, the lack of agreement on a
specic aim of cognitive approaches within literary studies. It seems to me
that, despite Margaret Freemans very courageous call for a streamlining
of cognitivism within literary theory and criticism, the actually existing
criticism as briey noted above spreads out over a variety of foci and
themes and is not necessarily geared towards subordinating literary analy-
sis to an overall cognitivist paradigm. On the contrary, what cognitive sty-
listics (Semino and Culpeper 2002) and cognitive literary studies (Toolan
and Weber 2005) have been doing is to use elements from cognitive stud-
ies to corroborate, modify and frame their own terminology and practices.
Cognitivism is employed either to prove how well-founded ones analyses
are since they can be explained within the separately existing cognitive
paradigm; or to generate new exciting insights into specic texts or aspects
of narrative that cognitive analysis is opening up to the critic. Thus, cogni-
tivism is indeed a cognitive turn since it is used as a new but not nec-
essarily more truthful theoretical method to generate new readings and to
provide original insights into texts. For some critics, it helps to explain or
underscore certain aspects of their interpretative practice or narratological/
feminist/deconstructive, etc. theoretical analysis. Despite being a fairly ab-
stract and variegated eld, cognitive studies have therefore proved to be a
rich hunting ground for many different applications. Except in Tsurs and
Margaret Freemans leading statements, however, little distinctive unity
can be glimpsed; and Freeman only achieves such unity at the expense of
excluding much that has proved stimulating within the cognitive studies
eld. My own approach below is an application quite on the eclectic lines
of much other cognitivist literary research, though it perhaps has the bene-
t of expanding an already cognitivist model by further resort to additional
elements from the same toolbox.
2. Blending theory what is it?
Blending theory is a development from cognitive metaphor theory as rst
devised by George Lakoff, Mark Johnson and Mark Turner in the 1970s
and 1980s. Taking their cue from prototype theory (Eleanor Rosch), fuzzy
set theory and issues of categorization, Lakoff and his collaborators devel-
oped a theory of language as intrinsically metaphorical. Rather than seeing
metaphor as an ornament or as a supplement to the literal, these linguists
recognized that almost all our language is ultimately metaphoric (ubiqui-
tous and indispensable) since we can only talk about abstract entities or
relations by categorizing them in terms of what we intimately know: our
bodies and extensions of our bodies in immediate physical reality (Semino
Naturalizing the unnatural 7
and Steen 2008: 235). Thus, expressions like He blew up conceptualize
anger as a boiling liquid that blows the lid (xiNn is : coN1:iNr) and
connect with experiences of perspiration and reddening foreheads. Like-
wise, the use of prepositions like English on in I met him on the train to
Newcastle can be explained by reference to the visual image of dots on
lines, which is applied to the train as a long object moving along the line
of the train tracks. Other languages, like German, conceptualize the same
scenario in terms of a container frame (referring to the train carriage or
compartment), and therefore use in to relate passengers and trains.
In particular, cognitive linguistics started to see these all-pervasive met-
aphors as cognitively grounded, as reecting the way in which we think,
thereby initiating a shift from earlier metaphor theories that saw metaphor
as a facet of speech, as a rhetorical ploy, as ornamental trimming added to
the (literal) meaning or, worse, deliberately falsifying what is the case
(metaphor as untruthful proposition). Like deconstructivist literary criti-
cism (de Man 1979 [1973], 1978; Derrida 1982), cognitive metaphor theo-
rists assert that the supposedly literal is metaphoric, or that there is (al-
most) no such thing as a literal sentence.
In the wake of Lakoff and Johnsons Metaphors We Live By (1980), the
projection of one concept on another emerged as an important aspect of
metaphor creation. Rather than positing similarities on the basis of a com-
mon ground, a common denominator, cognitive metaphor theory empha-
sized that one area of experience was seen in the framework of another,
and that meant that one frame was imposed on another. Cognitive meta-
phor theory therefore introduced a new terminology in which there is pro-
jection of a source domain onto the target domain. This terminology sup-
planted that of I. A. Richards and others, such as vehicle and tenor, which
looked at metaphor from the readers or listeners perspective. Encounter-
ing a seemingly illogical word in a sentence, one reinterpreted (or natural-
ized) it by resorting to a metaphorical reading that, on the basis of the
actual referent (tenor) deduced from the context, tried to explain the de-
parture from literal meaning by nding a common ground between the
tenor (referent) and the vehicle (metaphor expression).
2
Thus, in the standard example sentence Achilles is a lion, the connec-
tion between the tenor (Achilles) and the vehicle (lion) is variously conjec-
tured to be courage or ferocity, or maybe dignity, a royal behavior, a fear-
inspiring aspect or cruelty and carnivorous voracity. One notes how the
meaning of the metaphor cannot be easily pinned down, while in the new
terminology, the meaning does not need to be spelled out since it is left
open the source domain lion is projected on the target, the hero Achil-
les, and what the result of this projection will be remains negotiable. Simi-
larly, in Robert Burnss famous poem A Red, Red Rose (1794),
8 Monika Fludernik
My love is like a red, red rose
Thats newly sprung in June:
My love is like the melody
Thats sweetly played in tune. (Gardner 1975: 491)
the beloved (tenor) is gured rst in terms of a rose (because she is sweet-
smelling? or because of her rosy cheeks and red lips?) and later as a melo-
dy (this vehicle seems to target her beautiful voice) when one applies I.A.
Richardss terminology. The cognitive metaphor model, by contrast, sees
the beloved woman rst as a rose and then as a melody, without needing
to stipulate a common ground, thus endorsing the wide range of interpreta-
tive options.
The advantages of the cognitive metaphor approach are particularly
striking when one turns to metaphors that are lexicalized as verbs or adjec-
tives rather than as nouns, or that relate to more complex and especially
mixed metaphors. In the two lines from Wordsworth and Hopkins cited
below, it is extremely difcult to apply Richardss tenor and vehicle model.
In This city now doth like a garment wear / The beauty of the morning, the
metaphor vehicles wear and beauty anthropomorphize the city and the
morning, yet morning cannot be the tenor; the literal expression is
shrouded in, itself a metaphor, and glow of sunlight correspond to the
tenors, but this explanation fails to clarify the syntax of the sentence.
3

When one uses Richardss model, it is more convincing to see garment
and beauty as the key terms, dispensing with wear, and to rewrite the line
as The beauty of the morning is a garment of the city. Yet the relation of
Figure 1. Projection of source domain on target domain
Naturalizing the unnatural 9
city to morning in the formula remains off limits (is the morning to its
beauty what the garment is to the city?), and the anthropomorphic frame of
the metaphor then disappears from view. The same is true of Hopkinss
line cited below. Like the example from Composed Upon Westminster
Bridge, September 3, 1802, the nal two lines from Hopkins Gods
Grandeur,
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
immediately clear to the reader, become quite unwieldy when they have to
be explicated in the frame of vehicle, tenor and common ground because
the recognizable equation of the Holy Ghost with a dove is lexicalized in
verbal shape (broods) and metonymically conjoined with warm breast and
bright wings. If these are taken to be the vehicle, the question which parts
of the Holy Spirit correspond to breast and wings causes quite insoluble
problems; yet it is only through these metonyms that the vehicle dove can
be intuited.
All of these issues are happily avoided by the cognitive metaphor
model, which reanalyzes the two passages as projections, as shown in Fig-
ure 2.
What the original model by Lakoff, Johnson and Turner did not yet fully
bring out was how the projection of analogies works in a way that allows
one to read the metaphor as a semantically enriched construct. How does
the resultant semiotic unit (to be called a blend) create new meanings not
Figure 2. Cognitive metaphor analysis of Wordsworth and Hopkins
10 Monika Fludernik
contained in either the source or the target domains? Blending theory, de-
veloped by Gilles Fauconnier (1994, 1997) in collaboration with Mark
Turner (Fauconnier and Turner 1998, 1999, 2002, 2008; see also Turner
1996, 2007, 2008), is able to improve on the shortcomings of classical
cognitive metaphor theory and additionally posits some much more funda-
mental theses about the human mind.
As depicted in Figure 3, a blend more precisely, what Fauconnier and
Turner call a single-scope blend introduces the notion of a generic space
(the circle on top) which determines the structure of the analogies between
source and target domains. As the dotted lines indicate, in the blend of a
cartoon in which the presidential candidates Obama and McCain are shown
in cowboy gear shooting at one another with pistols, the campaign for the
presidency conducted in a battle of words is recongured as a battle of
weapons. The two cowboys in the picture correspond to the real-life gen-
tlemen in suits; the pistol duel corresponds to verbal competition, for in-
stance in a TV debate; and in the blend the same constellation of two men
exchanging hits emerges from a blended cowboy Obama facing cowboy
McCain with their pistols aimed at one another. The source domain is thus
preserved in the paraphernalia of the Wild West scenario, whereas the tar-
get domain appears in the faces of the cowboys, which are recognizable
caricatures of the two political antagonists. By means of the blend, some
additional semantic surplus is introduced, hinting at the aggressive tenden-
cy of the polemics and perhaps also at McCains Western background (as
senator from Arizona). The blend slyly alludes to the genre of the Western,
Figure 3. Obama and McCain as two cowboys duelling with pistols metaphor as single-
scope network
Naturalizing the unnatural 11
in which cowboys shoot Indians or members of criminal gangs, thus put-
ting Obama into these two roles. The cartoon could therefore be read con-
servatively as an implied denigration of Obama (qua villain cowboy or In-
dian), or ironically and liberally as a criticism of McCains subconsciously
racist attitude towards his antagonist.
Another very common example of a single-scope blend is the sentence
My surgeon is a butcher (Grady et al. 1999: 103106; Crisp 2003: 110). In
this blend, the source domain of the butcher is projected onto the target
domain of the surgeon. In order to make sense of the projection, a generic
space is activated which focuses on a person wielding an instrument on an
immovable corpse-like object. In this scenario, the butchers cleaver be-
gins to be analogized with the surgeons scalpel, and the slab of pork, beef
or lamb metamorphoses into the anaesthetized patient on the operating
table.
In the blend, the surgeon-as-butcher produces additional meaning by im-
plicitly converting the senseless patient into a corpse (suggesting that the
surgeon hacks into the patient as if s/he were a slab of meat, or even hint-
ing that the surgeon may end up turning the patient into a corpse because
he lacks the requisite delicacy and skill for treating humans). These addi-
tional proliferations of meaning arising from the source domain are in fact
unlimited: the surgeon in the blend could also be read as cruel, inefcient,
heartless, or even murderous all associations that may be activated in
different contexts of use. Brandt and Brandt (2005: 119) propose an addi-
tional meaning space and relevance space for blends, which solves some of
Figure 4. My surgeon is a butcher
12 Monika Fludernik
the problems that arise from the double status of the blend in Fauconnier
and Turners model (where it is both a surface structure expression and an
imaginative mental entity).
What this model achieves is an explanation of the fairly obvious analo-
gies that the metaphor gives rise to, as well as providing for the additional
surplus meanings which shade off into individually and contextually-
motivated suggestions that can no longer claim general validity.
In more recent work, Fauconnier and Turner have moved on to discuss
what they call double-scope networks. In these blends two input-spaces
create a new meaning structure that can no longer be reduced to a single-
direction projection from source to target domain:
One of Turners examples (Turner 2007: 220) for double-scope blending is
the mythological gure of the so-called selkie, a seal which moves out of
the water to live on land in the shape of a human being. This gure arises
from the blending of two input spaces, that of the seal (which lives in the
water and has fur) and that of the human woman, who lives on land and
wears clothes. The blend is a seal-turned-human who/which has shed its
fur to become human, thus analogizing seal fur and human clothes. With-
out the fur, the selkie can no longer swim and thus cannot escape into the
water. In order to become a seal again, it puts on its seal skin. In many
tales, the selkie has her pelt stolen by her lover or husband and is thus
forced to stay human, losing all her magic power.
Figure 5. Double-scope blending
Naturalizing the unnatural 13
3. Applications of blending theory to literature
Before producing my own application of blending theory to natural narra-
tology, I would like to briey sketch the bewildering range of uses that
blending theory has been put to in literary studies so far. The blending
model has been used for both more theoretical and more practical pur-
poses, in the analysis of genre as well as the interpretation of particular
poems, plays and narratives, as well as in the elucidation of one single
metaphor in its specic contexts.
Perhaps the most immediately useful of all the articles that I have read
is Freemans Cognitive Mapping in Literary Analysis (2002), which
combines some theoretical propositions with numerous illustrations from
the poetry of Emily Dickinson. The article has the additional advantage of
demonstrating by means of responses to a discussion group list exactly
how different readings of the same lines of poetry arise. Not only does
Freeman provide a valuable introduction to the cognitive mapping of attri-
butes, relations and systems (in reference to Holyoak and Thagard 1995);
she also shows how different readers use different mappings in their analy-
ses of the same text and therefore arrive at different readings of the same
poem. Freeman has applied blending in numerous other articles on poetry
(e.g. 1995, 2000).
Applications to drama, as Semino and Steen note, have been mostly to
the works of Shakespeare, and Donald Freemans essays are particularly to
be noted in this area (Semino and Steen 2008: 240241; D. Freeman 1995,
1999). In fact, the application is to specic metaphors and blends in the
Figure 6. Turners example of Selkie (werewolf-like seal)
14 Monika Fludernik
dialogue of Shakespeares plays. No application exists to my knowledge
that treats more complex dramatic issues such as visual blends, past/
present blends in dream plays, or spatial blends in fantasy. (The same goes
for lm.)
Much interesting work has, however, been done concerning narrative.
Semino and Steen correctly note some excellent applications of metaphor
analysis in literary narratives, such as Popovas work (2002, 2003). The
elucidation of metaphor in a text, whether that text is a poem, play, short
story or novel, perhaps properly belongs to what Semino and Culpeper call
cognitive stylistics (2002).
More interesting from a methodological perspective are applications of
blending theory to other aspects of narrative or poetry. I would particularly
like to draw attention to Craig Hamiltons essay on personication (2002),
in which the function of personication in the poems of Auden is ana-
lyzed. Another exciting piece of criticism is Barbara Dancygiers essay on
Jonathan Rabans travel narratives (2005), which outlines a large number
of blending (compression) and decompression strategies in Rabans work.
Although the link between blending and viewpoint proposed in the title of
that paper may not be fully convincing from a narratological perspective
on point of view, it hints at a possible extension of blending theory to nar-
ratological issues such as focalization and analepsis.
A particularly innovative paper is Sindings application of blending the-
ory to Joyces Ulysses (Sinding 2005). Sinding discusses the drama-in-
novel blend of the Circe chapter of Ulysses and focuses on the novels
hallucination techniques, which result in the dream-like or fantastic ele-
ments of that chapter. He uses three input frames and the structure of
transformations (Circe transforms men into swine) as generic space (611).
This research opens a number of interesting prospects for the analysis of
science ction and fantasy literature (one could very fruitfully apply it to
the Harry Potter books, for instance).
4. Natural narratology and blending theory
How can one apply blending theory within narratology? During a lecture
by Mark Turner in Aarhus at the ESSE conference in 2008, I was struck
by the idea that blending could be used to explain a particular process that
I had described in Towards a Natural Narratology (1996). In that book I
had developed a model of four levels of cognitively-based prototypes to
which narrative resorts in the process of reception and production (1996:
4345). Level I was the level of basic cognitive concepts or frames such
as co:i or iN1rN1ioN, which we access in order to explain everyday hu-
Naturalizing the unnatural 15
man reality. (It corresponds to Ricoeurs Mimesis I.) Level II concerns the
narrative scenarios which I had described as the narrative frames of 1rii-
iNc, virviNc, rxirirNciNc, rrirc1iNc and :c1iNc. Level III, the one
relevant here, corresponds to the generic prototypes that determine our
reading frames in literature (such as the action lm, the bildungsroman,
etc.). On Level III one would also place concepts such as that of the au-
thorial narrator and unreliable narration. Level IV was the level of natural-
ization on which readers actively interpret the text in hand as a narrative
text by resorting to the frames from the other three levels.
The big question asked in some reviews of Towards a Natural Narra-
tology was how new frames arise if everything is cognitively based.
4

Blending theory provides some very good answers to this question.
My proposal is, in short, to use blending theory as an explanation for
how we are able to understand naturally impossible storytelling scenarios,
and to account for why they are so easily accommodated by readers once
the original oddity has worn off through repeated exposure to the new
form. My basic contention is that non-natural storytelling frames arise
from the blending of previously familiar natural or naturalized storytelling
scenarios. This, I maintain, makes the resultant blend cognitively readable
and can result in its eventual naturalization as a new prototype once the
new form has been reused sufciently often to become a recognizable
frame, a frame to which the reader then resorts subconsciously when en-
countering a new text or narrative.
As Figure 7 illustrates, one can, for instance, explain omniscient nar-
rative as a metaphoric transfer of godly powers to the textual narrator
Figure 7. Omniscient narrator as metaphor
16 Monika Fludernik
persona. Omniscience is a metaphor (N::1o is con-iixr) which en-
tails a number of parallels between divinity and the narratorial position.
Thus the narrator, like God, seems to invent or create the ctional world
and rules or watches over it; in addition, the narrator can therefore look
into characters minds just as God can look into humans souls. Other as-
pects of divinity of course do not transfer to the narrator, such as moral
strictures, the Last Judgment or punishment of sinners in Hell. The proto-
typical image of God used in this metaphor is that of God as father, watch-
ing over humans and monitoring them.
One could therefore argue that the familiar template of the omniscient
narrator frame relies on a blend in which the human narrator persona qua
his role of creator acquires superhuman or divine abilities. Note, though,
that the narrator does not regularly claim to have created the tale, even
if some authorial narrators like Diderots in Jacques le fataliste (rst pub-
lished 1796) do just that. Because God is the creator (and, in some ver-
sions of Christianity, predestines the fate of humanity), He also knows
everything, and, in popular lore, can look into peoples souls. As a con-
sequence, the narrator-as-God comes to stand in a position of divine
knowledge and can see into characters minds.
I would like to emphasize that this metaphor like all metaphors is of
course literally wrong. The knowledge of the narrator is equivalent to the
knowledge of evangelists rather than that of God himself. Evangelists
seem to know a good deal more than they humanly could, and their ac-
count of Jesus life, passion and ascension corresponds in large measure to
an omniscient narrative. It is the Old Testament books, which have suppos-
edly been dictated to their writers by God, and in which God is the narra-
tor although He talks about Himself in the third person, that reect the
situation of the author of ction. Note, though, that the narrator in an au-
thorial novel does not write about its creator; that indeed would be meta-
lepsis. To say that omniscient narrative models itself on a blend is not to
say that this is what omniscient narrative is really like; it merely explains
the folk-psychological manner in which the desire for complete knowledge
acts itself out in metaphoric transfer.
5

A different model to explain the rise of omniscience might be by way of
a double-scope network, as delineated in Figure 8.
In this blend, the transfer occurs through the generic frame of people
having minds and narrators having insight into their own minds. The blend
would grant that privilege to the narrator by conating his own mental
world with that of the characters. This is a double-scope blend since one
can also map out the transfer from the side of the ctional world, looking
at characters of ctional narrative and giving them readable minds by pro-
jecting their story onto narrators ability to read (their own) mind. Whereas
Naturalizing the unnatural 17
the rst single-scope blend addresses our intuitions about the result of the
blend and explains the term omniscient narrator, the double-scope net-
work does more to explain the structure of desire in the blend. The reader
wants to have his cake and eat it; s/he wants to have a story and to know
what the characters are thinking a fantasy that the omniscient narrator
blend allows them to enjoy.
One can now go over a number of different non-naturally occurring story-
telling situations and suggest how they arise from blends. Figure 9, for
instance, tries to show how epistolary ction emerges from a correspon-
dence in letters blended with a love story (not the topic of a normal ex-
change of letters). Figure 10 maps the odd situation of dying in the rst
person (Stanzel 1984: 229232) by blending omniscience (describing the
death experience of a character) with an inside view of the narrators pass-
ing away. In Figure 11, I try to sketch the blend on which second-person
narrative relies when it models itself on an instruction manual or guide
book format. This is not the only way in which to explain second-person
ction.
6
Other variants of second-person ction use the format of episto-
lary exchange (e.g., Gloria Naylors Mama Day, 1988) and still others op-
erate on the basis of self-address, or simply on implicit reader-address
merged with the readers immersion in the consciousness of a ctional per-
sona (see Fludernik 1994a, 1994c, and forthcoming). This points the way
towards the realization that new storytelling scenarios may rely on a com-
bination of different blends until a new generic prototype has become con-
ventionalized (cf. Fludernik 2003a).
Figure 8. Omniscient narrator as double-scope network
18 Monika Fludernik
Finally Figure 12 tries to illustrate the blend on which rst-person omni-
science relies. This form, recently introduced to the readers of Narrative
by Rdiger Heinze (2008), has been around for some time, certainly since
Salman Rushdies Midnights Children (1981), and is currently ourishing,
for instance in Jeffrey Eugenidess Middlesex (2002). Figure 12 can be
read as a single or double-scope network. In the case of a single projection
from source to target domain, omniscient narration would be imposed on
the target rst-person narrative. This, in fact, makes most sense. However,
one could conceivably treat rst-person omniscience as a case of double-
Figure 9. Epistolary ction
Figure 10. Dying in the rst person (Stanzel 1984)
Naturalizing the unnatural 19
scope blending in which rst-person narrative is also a source domain,
yielding Figure 12.
Having introduced the idea of blending to map out unfamiliar story-
telling scenarios, let me address some of the problems arising from this
approach.
7
One may distinguish between two types of problems. On the
one hand, there are issues raised by blending theory itself; on the other
hand, its application to narratology and to the cognitive frames of story-
telling needs to be analyzed in more detail. Since the two issues relate to
one another, let me start with the rst.
Figure 11. Second-person ction
Figure 12. First-person omniscient narrative as double-scope network
20 Monika Fludernik
Blending theorys main problems clearly arise from the claims that it
reects mental processes that distinguish human cognition from that
of animals and that determine much of our creative thinking.
8
Since I am
not a cognitive scientist and do not do experiments on brain functions,
these problems are not relevant to me here. As with the Freudian model
of the psyche, which has proved to be extremely fertile for literary analy-
sis though psychoanalysts today apparently nd it no longer useful, blend-
ing theory may be problematic from the standpoint of the cognitive sci-
ences, but that in no way detracts from its attractiveness as an explicatory
model in the humanities. On the other hand, should blending theory
turn out to be a scientically good explanation of brain function, such ad-
ditional authority would tend to boost the use of the theory in literary
practice.
My main reservations with the model as far as I am able to understand it
concern the assumption of a generic frame in double-scope blending.
Whereas it seemed very easy to nd a generic frame for single-scope
blends, the generation of one for double-scope blends was often very ten-
tative, and I found it very difcult to see any common structure of analo-
gies, at least in the extensive format used in blending theory.
This immediately links to the problem with the blending model in its
application to storytelling scenarios such as I have attempted it. As was
severally noted in the discussions after my presentation of the paper,
9
I
was reconstructing the blend from the bottom upwards. What I started out
from was the result, the blend, e.g. second-person narrative, and the trick
was to come up with two input spaces and a generic space that would de-
scribe the relevant mappings. This situation is very different from the ex-
ample of a textual metaphor, in which at least the source domain is clearly
articulated in the language. Thus, in My surgeon is a butcher, the source
and target domains are given and allow a fairly good reconstruction of the
generic frame. Most important of all, the blend is what we deduce from
the two domains by way of interpretation. The operation therefore works
top downwards.
Starting with the gure of the selkie and even more clearly in my appli-
cations to storytelling situations, the direction is reversed since one starts
out from the blend and works ones way up to the generic frame, venturing
on the thin ice of speculation. Although I believe that the model does make
sense, it has to be admitted that the input spaces are obviously extrapola-
tions from the results and cannot in any way assume a validity that is
borne out by external evidence. In short, although blending theory allows
me to map out the possible mechanism of naturalization, it does not lend
any scientic authority to the process. In fact, even if blending became a
standard of cognitive science and had been proved to exist in experiments,
Naturalizing the unnatural 21
this would not entirely resolve the problem with speculative extrapolation,
since on the level that I am dealing with there could not be any experimen-
tal proof, or, if there could, I am not aware of it since I lack the relevant
background in cognitive science.
Having expanded on the various problems raised by the application, it
has to be noted, however, that the model for a mechanism of creativity
(cf. Fauconnier and Turner 1999), which is what blending theory is, does
help to provide a possible explanation for the development of new non-
naturally occurring storytelling scenarios within the framework of natural-
ization as delineated in Towards a Natural Narratology. What makes the
model in Towards a Natural Narratology convincing is its reliance on the
prototype of conversational narrative, from which the frames of :c1iNc,
1riiiNc, virviNc, rxirirNciNc and rrirc1iNc were deduced. On the
assumption that blending theory will consolidate itself as an accepted aca-
demic theory of the mind, the application that I have proposed might be
equally convincing as a complementary piece of the jigsaw puzzle of how
narrative functions.
5. Outlook
In this nal section I would like to indicate what I believe cognitive ap-
proaches to narrative could achieve in the future and what the lessons to
be learned from my attempt to apply them are.
One issue that strikes me as particularly promising for the application of
blending theory to narrative is free indirect discourse (FID). The mapping
of narrators and characters voices so often apostrophized in dual voice
theories of free indirect discourse could be explained as a blend at least in
the readers reading experience. The same is true for metalepsis. As
Dancygier says in reference to Fauconnier and Turners example of the
Debate-with-Kant blend: When a contemporary philosopher [says] Kant
disagrees with me on this, he has to construct a mental space in which he
(our contemporary [ . . . ]) is sharing a spatial and temporal space with
Kant [ . . . ] and is exchanging opinions with him (2005: 101). The blend
has the philosopher engage in face-to-face conversation with the dead
sage. Similarly, in rhetorical metalepsis (Fludernik 2003b; Ryan 2005) and
even some cases of ontological metalepsis, blending theory could be used
to great effect. Thus, when Charlotte Bront in Shirley (1849) invites read-
ers to enter the ctional scene, she is performing a blend, literalizing a
virtual scenario, in which the readers current situation and that of his/her
immersive dipping into the ctional world are blended:
22 Monika Fludernik
Yet even in those days of scarcity there were curates: the precious plant was rare,
but it might be found. [ . . . ] You shall see them, reader. Step into this neat garden-
house on the skirts of Whinbury, walk forward into the little parlour there they
are at dinner. Allow me to introduce them to you: Mr Donne, curate of Whin-
bury; Mr Malone, curate of Briareld; Mr Sweeting, curate of Nunnely. These are
Mr Dunnes lodgings, being the habitation of one John Gale, a small clothier. Mr
Donne has kindly invited his brethren to regale with him. You and I will join the
party, see what is to be seen, and hear what is to be heard. At present, however,
they are only eating; and while they eat we will talk aside.
(Shirley, i; Bront 2006: 6)
A subject that has attracted particular attention in blending study is the
genre of allegory (Crisp 2001, 2008; Sinding 2002b). However, both au-
thors use the term allegory in a rather loose sense. Crisp illustrates al-
legory on the example of Blakes A Poison Tree, where its distinction
from a symbol may be debatable; Sinding analyzes Kafkas Castle, a
narrative whose identication as an allegory he himself problematizes.
Blending and allegory do, however, clearly share a number of interesting
features. Thus, allegory acquires its meanings through the extended meta-
phor of personication and the application of personhood parameters to
abstract concepts. Death, as in Everyman, not only arrives to grab his vic-
tim, he sets his prey on a journey of religious self-analysis and self-
criticism, which further involves Everymans interaction with characters
like Faithful or Good Dedes. The theological pattern of sin, repentance
and remission of sins is thereby enacted allegorically in the ctional world
of the soul, which corresponds to a blend of our real world (in which peo-
ple talk and walk from one place to another) with the requirements of
soul-searching. That the individual abstracta as characters act out their
inherent qualities makes this blend particularly attractive: Fellowship is
only interested in good fellowship and does not wish to take on any re-
sponsibilities; Goodes (possessions) likewise goes his own way and
does not want to take a trip to the other world; Beaute, Dyscrecyon and
Strength fail to keep up their support; whereas Knowledge and Good
Dedes accompany Everyman to the door of Death. As with many other al-
legories, most typically in Bunyans Pilgrims Progress (1678), the iirr is
: oiNrx cognitive metaphor is combined with personication to pro-
duce allegory.
There is, therefore, much work still to do, not only in extending the cog-
nitive approach to further literary pastures, but especially to ponder more
generally the theoretical bases for such applications within literary theory
and within cognitive linguistics and cognitive narratology.
University of Freiburg
Naturalizing the unnatural 23
Notes
Correspondence address: monika.udernik@anglistik.uni-freiburg.de
1. This essay is based on a paper given at a conference on Unnatural Narratives held at
the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies in November 2008.
2. I recognize that this depiction of Richards and pre-Lakofan metaphor theory is ex-
tremely simplied and in a proper history of metaphor study would need to be deepened
and modied extensively, taking account of the very variegated approaches represented,
for instance, in Ortony (1979).
3. Steen (1999) proposes the terms metaphor focus, metaphor frame and metaphor idea to
accommodate some of these problems.
4. A rst theoretical answer was given in Fludernik (2003a). See also Gibbs (1999: 162),
who illustrates how metaphors can be culturally inected and yet cognitively universal in
the way they operate.
5. This sentence replies to Meir Sternberg, the critic of package deals, who noted at the
Narrative Conference in Birmingham in June 2009 that the blending model of omniscient
narration suggested that this is what omniscience amounts to, an illegitimate package
deal (Sternberg 2007, 2009).
6. On second-person ction see Richardson (1991), Margolin (1994) and Fludernik (1994a,
1994b).
7. For a very balanced critical account see Jackson (2002).
8. Gibbs (2001) argues that it remains unclear exactly what kinds of empirical data can
falsify it [blending theory] (2001: 323). A good example of the problems spawned by
the cognitive metaphors construed by cognitive metaphor theoreticians is provided by
Grady et al. (1999: 109) when they cite a series of metaphorical mappings underlying the
ship of state metaphor that includes the reasonable coisrs or :c1ioN :r i:1ns as
well as the rather odd (because specic) cicixs1:Ncrs :r vr:1nr. For a criticism
of cognitive metaphor theory, see Haser (2005).
9. After the initial Freiburg conference, for which the paper was written, the model was
presented in different thematic contexts at three further conferences, the rst ENN Con-
ference in Hamburg in January 2009; the Contemporary Narratology Conference of the
ISSN in Birmingham, UK, in June, 2009; and the Minds and Narrative Conference in
Leuven, Belgium, also in June 2009.
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