15!!! Kimmel - Macro Structure in Heart of Darkness

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Metaphor and Symbol

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From Metaphor to the "Mental Sketchpad": Literary Macrostructure and Compound Image Schemas in Heart of Darkness
Michael Kimmel Available online: 17 Nov 2009
To cite this article: Michael Kimmel (2005): From Metaphor to the "Mental Sketchpad": Literary Macrostructure and Compound Image Schemas in Heart of Darkness, Metaphor and Symbol, 20:3, 199-238 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327868ms2003_3
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METAPHOR AND SYMBOL, 20(3), 199238 Copyright 2005, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
From Metaphor to the Mental Sketchpad: Literary Macrostructure and Compound Image Schemas in Heart of Darkness
Michael Kimmel
Austrian Academy of Sciences Institute for European Integration Research, Vienna
My case study of Heart of Darkness analyzes the role of image schemas in shaping narrative macrostructures and in organizing literary metaphor systems. Assuming that we can reconstruct global story meaning from local image-schematic metaphors, I propose a model in which compound gestalts represent major aspects of the plot-defining macrostructure. It emerges as salient textual cues progressively add up to a scaffold of image-schematic elements that represent the events overall texture, its plot-gene. The rich metaphor system of Heart of Darkness throws into relief the amazing range of literary functions rooted in this image-schematic plot-gene, including plot mnemonics, inference, metaphor networks, and clustering of propositional knowledge, megametaphor, focalizing and viewpoint effects, irony, as well as mood contours. Progressing toward a cognitive model of narrative, I will argue that reading involves a mental simulation of how image schemas interact topologically to produce emergent effects. I dub the imagistic substrate of this simulation the mental (story) sketchpad, following Baddeley (1986).
Story comprehension involves a level of macrostructure representing a storys global meaning, that is, what we may call its plot, theme, or gist (Zwaan, Radvansky & Whitten, 2002). Discourse psychology, building on van Dijk and Kintsch (1983), has a long tradition of modeling macrostructures and global text coherence through propositional analysis. This view sees meaning as a complex hierarchy of propositions and has recently spawned sophisticated vector-matheRequests for reprints should be sent to Michael Kimmel, Schallergasse 39/30, A-1120 Vienna, Austria. E-mail: michael.kimmel@gmx.at
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matical models using abstract representations in a high-dimensional semantic space (Burgess & Lund, 2000; Kintsch, 1998; Landauer & Dumais, 1997). With literary narrative in view, the present case study presents an alternative view in which not macropropositions but image-schematic macrogestalts account for important cognitive aspects of global story structure. Image schemas do not only have the general virtue of explaining the grounding of meaning in ordinary percepts and experiences, I will argue that a number of global effects in reading literature are indeed difficult to explain without them.
STORY MACROSTRUCTURE AND THE ROLE OF IMAGE SCHEMAS Choosing the highly multilayered and polyvalent symbolist novel Heart of Darkness for study allows illustrating that conceptual metaphor analysis can be undertaken at some level of complexity. Conversely, it shows that narrative macrostructure can be validated through an analysis of metaphor systems (cf. Steen, 1994) and their global structuring. I here continue metaphor- and image-schema related work in cognitive poetics (Freeman, 1993, 1995; Stockwell, 2002; Werth, 1999) and related approaches to image-schematic structure in narrative (Johnson, 1993, chapter 7; Talmy, 2000; Turner, 1996) by advancing toward a more explicit emphasis of metaphors contribution to story macrostructure. Macrostructures and Imagery Discourse psychology indicates the importance of narrative macrostructures not only in story recall but also in achieving coherence during reading itself. Macrostructures involve thematic abstraction into adages that succinctly capture conflicts, planning failures, solutions, and resolutions (Graesser, Pomeroy & Craig, 2002, p. 26). Such summarizing statements compress inferential structures and hold a salient status in event memory (Guindon & Kintsch, 1984) in that they create inferences almost matching those of a full story (Graesser, Bowers, Olde, White, & Person, 1999). I will develop the idea here that such compressed macrorepresentations involve image schemas. We may start by setting off my topic from another kind of narrative imagery, that of key scenes. When we imagine literary episodes, film, or drama, these involve conjuring up more or less vivid imagery like Bogart and Bergman on the airstrip or Anna Karenina on the train platform. When asked to reproduce a novels or films gist, most people will report images not unlike screen-shots or miniclips, for example those of a glass slipper or a royal ball for Cinderella. Such rich images form major mnemonic pegs in episodic recall (Sadoski & Paivio, 2001, p. 106). My topic here, however, is the compressed repre-
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sentation of plot that involves a more schematic kind of imagery. This occurs in textural images of narrative structure (Reinhart, 1984), as images of circles, a zigzag, a sandwich that authors not seldom intuit (Sadoski & Paivio 2001, p.152159), or as abstract, compository temporal architecture, for example, one that contrasts adagio and prestissimo (Kundera, 1988). This type of imagery creates topological skeletons out of summarized plot structure. Cognitive poetics emphasizes the role of such dramatic topologies in understanding causal, intentional, and temporal event shape:
We appear to understand an event as having its own internal structure: It can be punctual or drawn out; single or repeating; closed or open; preserving, creating, or destroying entities; cyclic or not cyclic, and so on. This internal structure is image-schematic; it is rooted in our understanding of small spatial stories. (Turner, 1996, p. 28)
Especially force-dynamic image schemas have been held to underpin narrative causality (Brandt, 2002; Herman, 2002; Talmy, 2000) or to constitute a storys engine (Turner, 1996, p. 134). Image schemas may also have the power to structure plot in more specific ways than temporal and causal event shape, as Freeman (1995) observes for Macbeth:
PATH and CONTAINER image-schemata () constitute the terms in which we understand not only Macbeths language, but its central characters, crucial aspects of its various settings, and the sequence and structure of its unitary plot. (p. 691)
In this kind of analysis (cf. Freeman, 1993; Stockwell, 2002, p. 111) a theme is collapsed into one or several clearly circumscribed image schemas when local input accumulates in the recipients mind to produce a global structure. In other words, these image schemas have a thematic function and fulfill some role related to macrostructure compression.
Plot Compression Through Image Schemas A prerequisite for macrostructures are conceptual compressions and schematizations of narrated content. For example, readers may compress Anna Karenina encountering her lover Vronsky at the train station in the beginning and throwing herself in front of a train in the end into a single meaning, in particular because the two scenes frame a causally related sequence. This relates to the capability of the imagination to synthesize into a single awareness contents that cannot be perceived simultaneously (Iser, 1978, p. 138). A theory of macrostructure should both address how readers mentally represent the organizing principles or dramatism of
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a story as well as the process of theme-compression and theme-schematization leading to this. As to the compressed gist of a story itself we may call this its plot-gene, borrowing from Lotman (1990). I define this as an (a) summary representation of narrated events, (b) readers distill against a background of expectational schemas, (c) functioning as a mnemonic device around which less salient aspects of the story sequence crystallize as soon as we unpack it in recall, and (d) facilitating or feeding into various dynamic processes of story construal. In reading the expected macrostructure is constantly reevaluated, crosschecked with genre knowledge and updated from on-line cues. Note that the reason for specifying macrostructure as plot-gene, thus as generative rather than fixed, is that stories are dynamic arrays of event-related knowledge that can partitioned and construed in various ways. The process of macrostructural compression has been explained by discourse psychology as encoding a textbase into a string of conceptual propositions and then feeding salient local representationsusually corresponding to overlaps between propositionsinto a macrorepresentation, while deleting less important local material (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). This bottom-up distillation process, supplemented by top-down knowledge, is an assumption I share. However, in my alternative view a plot-gene encodes a portion of the macrostructure through imagery. It uses a small set of images by which we remember a novel (a drama, a ritual, a piece of music, etc.) in an economic way. Although this will usually include key scenes or even storyboards in which several key scenes are lined up, my topic here will be the image-schematic aspect of this. The image-schematic plot-gene results when story content becomes schematized as overall texture, say, a FORCE image of a linear story development or a BLOCKAGE-REMOVAL image for an obstacle that is overcome. By virtue of schematic compression such image schemas are distinct from (but may stand in continuity with) rich images of key scenes. Image schemas represent the story flow or dramaturgy from a global viewpoint and therefore function not so much as entry point for the recall of episodic details but as a basis for compressing an extended theme. Imagistic transformations are responsible for the compression process: We may imagine this as filtering salient features from several mental miniclips and blending them into a multiscene image, a process similar to cross-fading between static imagesonly that we now merge different episodes into one meaningful structure. Thus, the texture of events may go into a one-shot gestalt in our memory trace, when it is construed, or as Langacker (1987) calls it, scanned, in a summary fashion. Several global story tracks (cf. Talmy, 2000) may be image-schematic, including spatiality, temporality, causalityintentionality, transition between states, and protagonist interaction: In the spatial dimension, locations are represented as CONTAINERS that are discrete, overlapping or coinciding. In the temporal dimension the texture of an event is represented as PATH, BLOCKED PATH, CYCLE topology, etc. The causal dimension may be superimposed on
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the temporal one through FORCE imagery (notably as IMPETUS CHAINS). The intentionality of protagonists or quasi-personified agents may also be directly subsumed here, because causality is ipso facto invested with one intentionality or another. Thus, DIRECTIONAL VECTORS, PUSH/PULL IMAGES, or SELF-PROPELLING/EXTERNALLY-PROPELLING VECTORS may be seen into a mental scene (e.g., intentionality may define a landmark as attractor or repellant vis--vis an agent). In the ontological dimension, transition between states or qualities is understood as movement, for example, conceptualized as PATHS between container-like REGIONS. Finally, in the protagonist dimension the interplay of protagonists and the basic Greimasian actant roles such as helper, opponent, or subject are understood as force configurations (e.g., AGONISTANTAGONIST, ACTION CHAINS, FORCE ENABLEMENT schemas). Aspects such as spatiality, temporality, causalityintentionality, transition between states, and protagonist interaction may be inherently connected as part of a single image-schematic story logic. The following case study of Heart of Darkness will show how these different conceptual tracks are forged together to produce a complex plot. I will develop the idea that simple image schemas become progressively inscribed in a sketchpad-like mental substrate. This sketchpad is a kind of elaboration site (Langacker, 1987) for the globally perceived story dramatism in which all these tracks cospecify each other. The sketchpad supports the constructive attempt to create a global plot topology in the readers mind by interrelating salient textual force-dynamic and image-schematic elements. This happens through superimposition (cf. Holmqvist & Holanov, 1997) of topological elements interrelated by the storys logic. All the elements together configure a compound gestalt constituting the novels image-schematic plot-gene. My aim will be to show that this plot-gene functions not only as a story mnemonic but that aspects of it produce combined constraints on interpretation, lets us infer relational features between them and subserve various more complex literary functions.
A SURVEY OF METAPHORS IN HEART OF DARKNESS Plot Overview Joseph Conrads symbolism-saturated novel Heart of Darkness exploits as its central, although highly polyvalent theme a journey that penetrates into the dangerous unknown. In the novel, Marlow, a seaman and wanderer, recounts a steamboat expedition into deep African territory in search of the enigmatic Mr. Kurtz who is the companys agent at the Inner Station, a trading outpost. The story is situated around the turn from the 19th to the 20th century in the Congo, which was at that time a private property of the Belgian King Lopold and marked by rampant forced
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labor and vicious exploitation of the natives. The narratives thrust goes quite literally toward Kurtz who is the goal of the gradual intrusion into a strange, dangerous and unfathomable territory. Kurtz has imposed a surreal order of terror and charisma among the natives. He is a troubled man of captivating and demonic force who has signed a Faustian pact and is being worshipped as a god. When Marlow finds him, he is on the verge of madness and death and experiencing great inner turmoil. Marlow himself is changed in the struggle to comprehend his experience with this once exceptional and now tormented man who has looked into his own nature, the dark side of his passions. Having succumbed to alien and yet strangely familiar forces in the zone of proximity between culturalized humanity and an archaic Other, Kurtz dies with the words The horror! The horror! on his lips. Back from his experience, Marlow pays a visit to Kurtzs fiance in Brussels but conceals the truth about Kurtzs fall from grace and his last words from her. It is apparent that although the tales overall structure is that of a real journey, metaphorically it is a journey to the limits of the human soul, a double entendre that becomes evident in the very title. The story is, in the words of Bill Harrell (1982, p. 231), about a crossing of a boundary from the well-defined self, the soul, the domain of order and grace, into the unchartered abyss of the appetites, the crossing over from prudence to greed and lust. Five Major Categories of Metaphor The fact that Conrads symbolist novel abounds in striking metaphors, often in rich mixes of five or more, makes them obvious points of crystallization of literary processing (Steen, 1994, p. 36). I have identified linguistic metaphors based on textual recurrence and my intuition about their salience. The conceptual metaphors distilled from these can be grouped into five clusters (fully summarized in Kimmel, n.d.) depending on their different narrative task:
1. Penetration: Metaphorizing the event sequence. A host of metaphors define the causal nature of the plot. Part of this is a FORCE-interaction scenario in which Marlow feels attraction and Africas beckoning, followed by an act of intrusion, progression, captivation, and retribution (wilderness is depicted as an interacting agent throughout). In effect, a coherent spatial layout emerges from these metaphors: Africa and Europe relate to each other as in-spaceout-space, Africa is depth; entering is crossing a threshold or barrier; entering invites counterforce, then a breakthrough; knowing is moving outward from self and into the other, mystic attraction is a pull force; curiosity and passion are push forces (examples will follow). 2. Wilderness: Multiple metaphorizing of a target domain. Wilderness is the one most richly metaphorized theme of all. Wilderness interlaces a number of attributes by acting as a single target domain into which these are projected. Thus,
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calling it a nodal target domain (cf. Kimmel, 2004, p. 278) seems appropriate. Overall, wilderness is conceived of as: A WILD ANIMAL the playful pawstrokes of the wilderness (p. 71), conquered monster that has broken free (p. 62). A LOVER OR SEDUCTRESS it had caressed him, (), it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh (p. 81); its whisper has proven irresistibly fascinating (p. 95), appealing, suggestive (p. 39). A SORCERESS heavy, mute spell of the wilderness (p. 106), till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off forever (p. 59), a thrall to strange witchcraft (p. 64). AN ATTRACTOR AND DRIVING FORCE seemed to draw him to his pitiless breast / driven him out to the edge of the forest, to the bush, toward the gleam of fires, the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations (pp. 106107). AN AGGRESSIVE OR EMOTIONAL AGENT the assaulted by the powers of darkness (p. 82) or great human passion let loose (p. 73). incomprehensible frenzy (p. 62). AN ENIGMA OR INSCRUTABLE PERSON unfathomable enigma (p. 71), mysterious life () that stirs (p. 19), enchanted princess (p. 99) inscrutable intention (pp. 60, 99). AN AVENGER had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance (p. 95), the stillness of an implacable force () looked at you with a vengeful aspect (p. 60). A MIGHTY ANTAGONIST A frightful clatter came out of that hulk, and the virgin forest on the other bank of the creek sent it back (p. 53); wilderness burst in to a prodigious peal of laughter (p. 81). A DOMINATOR AND CONQUEROR how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own (p. 81), What were we who had strayed in here? Could we handle that dumb thing or would it handle us? (p. 49), the heart of a conquering darkness (p. 117). A PERSON IN SORROW tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain (p. 99) with great grief that may vent itself as violence or apathy in a great human passion let loose (p. 73). A STILL, PATIENT, AND BROODING PERSON The woods were unmoved, like a mask () looked with an air of hidden knowledge, of patient expectation, of unapproachable silence (p. 93).
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A BRINGER OF STRANGE DREAMS OR NIGHTMARES the dream-sensation that pervaded all my days (p. 71); being captured by the incredible that is of the very essence of dreams (p. 50); choice of nightmares (p 101). A CAPTIVATING PLACE heavy like the closed door of a prison (p. 93). A PRIMEVAL AND TIMELESS PLACE travelling up to the earliest beginnings of the world (p. 59), we were wanderers on a prehistoric earth (p. 62). A SPIRITUAL PLACE wall of a temple (p. 49), as profound a meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country. (p. 39). A SENSUOUS PLACE There are recurring metaphors of fecundity, shininess, glistening, throbbing, and graceful movement. Overall, metaphors of wilderness as an animal, lover, sorceress, avenger, dominator, vital, sorrowful, etc., relate both to power and to emotion and seem to reinforce a single generic-level force metaphor WILDERNESS IS A PASSIONATE AND VIGOROUS BEING. The aspects that do not harmonize straightforwardly with this are timelessness, spirituality, silence, and patience, although the latter two may indirectly add to the image of wilderness as brooding menace, if we interpret it as nonactualized force. Note also that although synesthetically connected attributes of dark, deep, hot, and silent lend a feel of embodied presence to the forest, a plethora of words such as throbbing, murmur, glitter, creeping, dim, hazy, faint, or distant (e.g., p. 49) are not easily interpreted as personifications. Yet, a number of passages explicitly depicts these sensorial attributes as an impinging FORCE: Africa impinges on the intruders through their exposed senses and transforms their souls, much like a physical impact deforming an object.
3. Darkness: Multiple metaphorizing of a source domain. Darkness is a highly multivocal source domain, even if we bracket out the extremely vivid synesthetic texture of lightdark effects. It seemingly serves as a node to interweave many meanings into a key symbol. Darkness characterizes Kurtz and the complex psychic state of those under his spell, or it is a specifying attribute integrated into several wilderness metaphors. Within the following complex tropes, darkness appears either as sensory attribute, or as a location agent with certain attributes:
A POWERFUL SENSORY IMPRESSION THAT CHANGES MAN smell of the damp earth, the unseen smell of victorious corruption [characterizing the wilderness] (p. 101).
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A PASSIVE FORCE OR BARRIER the darkness of impenetrable night (p. 101). AN ACTIVE AND OMINOUS POWER triumphant darkness from which I could not have defended her (p. 121). The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper that seemed to swell menacingly (p. 123). PAIN AND DEATH buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets intolerable weight (p. 101) The meeting with the mourning fiance is set at dusk, involves a mahogany door, a piano with dark gleams, she is all in black, has dark eyes, etc. (pp. 118f). MADNESS OR NIGHTMARE The abyss of insanity into which Kurtz has fallen is dark (p. 111); loyal to the nightmare of my choice I was anxious to deal with this shadow the peculiar blackness of that experience (p. 105). DANGER AND FEAR They were men enough to face the darkness (p. 19; that blends KNOWING IS SEEING and DANGER IS DARKNESS). LOSS OF ORIENTATION, DESPAIR AND EVIL A fiend-like black sorcerer in the darkness is associated with Kurtzs being utterly lost (p. 106). COMFORT, SENSUOUSNESS, AND CURIOSITY As a general mood, the dark may invoke mystery, sensuousness, and something comforting; faint lights and sounds stir the curiosity. Many of these expressions circumscribe the inner state of Kurtz, now taking hold of Marlow. An emergent generic-level metaphor is GENUINE MALE KNOWLEDGE IS DARKNESS, which inverts KNOWLEDGE IS LIGHT by ironically combining it with EVIL IS DARK and DEATH IS DARKNESS. Dark knowledge is deep, but also overpowering, altogether monstrous, a nightmare (p. 104).
4. Initiation: Symbolic meaning and the cultural metaphysics of plot. A higher level of metaphorical complexity rises above the attributes, scenario, and spatial layout just discussed. It involves a matrix of symbolism conceptualizing themes of a metaphysical kind that perhaps escape simple metaphor formulas. Specifically, it intertwines the topics of knowledge, initiation, eros, madness, and death in a scenario of a Faustian pact or fall from grace.
KURTZ AS A SEMIGOD emissary of pity, and science, and progress, a special being (p. 47).
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KURTZ AS DEVIL kicked himself loose of the earth (p. 107); taken a high seat among the devils of the land (p. 81); the scenery of Kurtzs rule of terror has all the attributes of a Dantean inferno. THE FAUSTIAN PACT no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the devil (p. 82). THE FALL I had peeped over the edge myself (p. 113), a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines (p. 111). FOREBODING OF DEATH Mournful sounds, descriptions of decay still and earthy atmosphere as of an overheated catacomb (p. 31). PSYCHOLOGICAL DYNAMICS OF THE IRRATIONAL Wilderness = loss of rational control, succumbing to passions of greed and power (Mr Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, p. 95). Wilderness lets man look into his insane parts: Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens!, I tell you it had gone mad. (ibid.). INITIATION IS A JOURNEY INTO ANOTHER SPACE (cf. pilgrimage, coming-of-age rites). A. Mythical original journey Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world () (p. 59). B. Entering a reserved space: imagery of thresholds and doors. C. Guardians of liminality: female knitters of black wool in the recruitment office and the harlequin who prepares Marlow for his encounter with Kurtz. FURTHER ELEMENTS OF RITES OF PASSAGE D. Initiation is a painful experience that requires courage. They were men enough to face the darkness (p. 19). E. Initiatory sequence: elements of terror, hazing, and confrontation with charisma. F. Rites of passage are reserved to men: women should stay in the beautiful world of their own; Marlow lies to Kurtzs Intended about his terrifying last words. G. Kurtz is a spiritual leader: His stare is wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness (p. 113); this man has enlarged my mind (p. 90). H. Wilderness is a creed: I had turned to the wilderness really (p. 101). SENSUAL FEMALES ARE THREATENING A wild and gorgeous apparition of an African woman whose complaint is connected with swift shadows darted out of the earth, swept
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around on the river, gathering the steamer in a shadowy embrace. (p. 99100). The sensuous female is perceived as a threat by the Europeans, one of whom is even prepared to use firearms for defending himself against her. SENSUALITY IS KNOWLEDGE [The harlequin and Kurtz] had come together unavoidably, like to ships becalmed near each other, and lay rubbing sides at last. We talked of everything Of love, too. He made me see thingsthings. (p. 91).
Overall, succumbing to irrational desires and sensuality is framed as a process of gaining essential, if archaic knowledge about the human condition, evil, and death. The process is quite plainly a rite of passage, yet paradoxically understood as a movement from salvation to damnation.
5. Ambivalence: Mood through metaphor interaction. In many different ways a systematic undercurrent of ambivalence is created through metaphor pairs hinting at opposite, yet connected meanings.
A. The journey is a kind of pilgrims progress but it leads not to salvation but to dark knowledge and damnation. B. The forests stillness can be meant as an appeal or menace (p. 49). Being assaulted by the powers of darkness can be your loss or your gain I wont pretend to say (p. 82). C. Africa and Europe are different, yet one. There is uncanny identification with the savages, the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar (p. 63). The slow creeping speed of the riverboat compared to the immense forest made you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether depressive that feeling (p. 61). D. Those trying to dominate end up being dominated. While the colonizers control Africa in terms of military and technological supremacy, Africa takes possession of their senses and soul. E. The archaic and supposedly primeval wilderness is vigorous and yet so close to death. F. The forest is still and calm, yet full of foreboding and violence. G. Light and darkness flow into one another and their symbolism is merged. Europeans think of themselves as the carriers of the torch from the sacred fire (p. 17) of European civilization, enlightening the poor savages, while obscuring their irrational motives of lust and greed (motives that are dark by virtue of their dangerous, subconscious, and evil nature).
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H. Wilderness, embodying the principles of female fecundity, power, and passion, is as attractive as it is dangerous. I. Women (the knitting doorkeepers, the wild and sensuous African mistress, Kurtzs Intended) are both pure and the very embodiments of unrestrained passion. Women guard the Doors of Darkness, hence the threshold that men have to cross. At the same time, European women should be kept apart in a wholly different beautiful world and away from this irrationality. J. Deep knowledge about human nature is alluring, but leads to madness and horror: the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself. (p. 108). K. Kurtz, the godlike man, represents the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, the fearful and fascinating mystery that is awe-inspiring, yet captivating. In sum, metaphors contribute to the following story features: (a) A sequential plot layout cast into an ATTRACTIONINTRUSIONRETRIBUTION scenario by image-schematic and force-dynamic metaphors; (b) multiple metaphorizing of a target domain node of wilderness; (c) multiple metaphorizing of a source domain node darkness; (d) a symbolic matrix of complex cultural themes (madness, death, eros, etc.); and (e) an undercurrent of ambivalence.
MACROSTRUCTURAL FUNCTIONS OF IMAGE SCHEMAS The remainder of this article will demonstrate how a substantial proportion of the presented metaphors feeds into the story macrostructure. To do this, I will try to explain how these local features become connected in a coherent global representation by virtue of their image-schematic affinities and what further inferences are invited by their combined constraints. Image schemas may underpin the global representation of plot and simultaneously inform various more specific submodels of the story in ways I will discuss now. Plot Mnemonic As van den Broek, Risden, Fletcher, and Thurlow (1996, pp. 175, 178) maintain considerable research has demonstrated that a successfully comprehended text is represented in memory as a coherent structure so that fluctuating activations [of causal and referential structure] during reading form the basis of a stable memory representation. Correspondingly, the most fundamental macrostructural function of image schemas is the creation of a condensed and global representation readers use in plot recall (or expected plot). In a global view of Heart of Darkness what impels the plot, how and where it happens conforms to a coherent image-schematic logic. In its totality, this compound to-
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pology depicts a gradual passage over a threshold from an out-space (Europe) into an opposed in-space (Africa), the arrow-like movement between the spheres representing Marlows slow riverboat journey. On top of this, two force vectors, an attracting and a driving force, are projected into the mental image. This elaborates the two-fold intentional nature of Marlows movement as, both, self-impelled or intrinsically driven and extrinsically motivated by a quasi-magnetic pull. (The one emerges largely from metaphors of knowledge seeking as penetrative act, while the other results from force-dynamic metaphors to do with sensuality and passion.) As a final element, the barrier at the extended boundary zone reflects metaphors of growing counterforce by the hidden opponents along the river. The elements assembled in what we may call a mental sketchpad result in a topology like the one in Figure 1. This overall picture permits us to isolate the following story tracks: A basic set of spatialized elements defines ontological story spaces, to set the stage so to speak in which the plot unfolds. A first aspect here is the apartness of spheres that represents real locations, but also their qualitative difference and ontological incommensurability insofar as they stand in evaluative or even moral opposition. A grid of concentric circles superimposed on this defines Europe as (shallow) outside sphere and Africa as (deep) inside sphere. (EVALUATIVE AND MORAL) OPPOSITION blank space of delightful mystery [the Congo] (p. 22); that great and saving illusion [the fiancees naive world] (p. 121); darkness and light metaphors (Kurtz as torch bearer of enlightenment, etc.). OUTSIDE-INSIDE/DEPTH Concentric: Outer StationCentral StationInner Station Mr. Kurtz was in there a little ivory coming out from there (p. 49); deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness (p. 62).
FIGURE 1
The image-schematic plot-gene of the overall event structure.
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Situated in these spaces, a processual event modality unfolds. The novel specifies the modality of transition between two locations and the two corresponding states as gradual (heightened by an equally gradual rise of tension). This modality is furthermore marked by a forced movement into a resisting in-space, which then closes around the intruder. GRADUAL TRANSITION The grimy beetle crawled on; reality it fades (p. 60); I went a little farther (), then still a little farther, till I had gone so far that I dont know how Ill ever get back (p. 90). INTRUSION fantastic invasion (p. 58), fantastic intrusion (p. 95); tear treasures out of the bowel of the land () burglars breaking into a safe. ENGULFMENT feel the savagery had closed around him (p. 19); wilderness took him into his bosom again (p. 45). being captured by the incredible which is the very essence of their dream (p. 50); shadowy embrace (p. 100), powers of darkness claimed him for their own. The story-driving intentionality, a related aspect of plot, defines what makes the protagonists act. First, pushpull attractors between ontological spaces stand out (i.e., the desire to penetrate the unfathomable, seductive beckoning of the wilderness). An equally striking element is the force antagonism between MarlowKurtz and the agent-like jungle wilderness, reflecting the continuously raised question as to whether White men dominate Africa or the converse. WILDERNESS AS ANTAGONIST Metaphors of wilderness dominator, avenger, animal, etc. (see previous); taking possession of an accursed inheritance (p. 62); Could we handle that dumb thing or would it handle us? (p. 49). PULL ATTRACTOR smiling inviting, mute with a air of whispering, Come and find out. (p. 29); beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations (p. 107).
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PUSH ATTRACTOR/DRIVE memory of gratified and monstrous passions had driven him out (p. 107). A final spatialized aspect of plot concerns boundaries and overcoming obstacles. In this respect the journey is depicted as intrusion and then transgression of a boundary zone, itself metaphorized as door, edge, threshold, or abyss. A barrier appears (i.e., force blockage or counterforce) both by virtue of the journeys literal physical hardships and as metaphorically conceived moral and emotional barrier. Its eventual transgression is motivated by the stronger attracting force (Africas beckoning, Marlows fascination with Kurtz and determination). REACHING BOUNDARY/THRESHOLD guarding the door of Darkness (p. 26); skirts of the unknown (p. 61); toiled along slowly on the edge (p. 62), peeped over the edge (p. 119). TRANSGRESSION beguiled his soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations, driven him out to the edge of the forest (p. 107); Transgression, punishment bang! (p. 48). BARRIERS Physical: tropical climate, attacks, death of companions; Moral: subtly insinuated when Marlow witnesses cruelties; Psychic: fear and madness. Metaphor Networks Based on these considerations, we may also ask how full conceptual metaphors cluster into networks and share the cognitive workload of complex representations between them (cf. Koller, 2003; Kyratzis, 1997; Quinn, 1991). Assuming the many metaphors of our novel do not remain an amorphous jumble, on what basis may readers impose coherence? I will propose two general mechanisms of metaphoric coherence here, one of which runs parallel to, and takes its impetus from, the image-schematic coherence of the plot; the other exploits what we may call metaphoric nodal domains for purposes of interleaving rich symbolic material. A by-product of the plot mnemonic of cospecifying image schemas is that these weave richer metaphoric meanings into the conceptual fabric by making the metaphors equally cospecifying. The metaphors come into play (so to speak by a kind of activation spread) because the plot-building image schemas are simulta-
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neously the source domains of entire metaphoric mappings. The cospecifying metaphors, partly conventional and partly novel, are these: STATES (OF EXPERIENCE) ARE CONTAINERS THE QUEST FOR KNOWLEDGE IS A PATH THE FASCINATION OF THE IRRATIONAL IS PHYSICAL ATTRACTION CURIOSITY IS A DRIVING FORCE ILLICIT BEHAVIOR IS TRANSGRESSION IRRATIONALITY IS TRANSGRESSION MORALITY IS A COUNTERFORCE INITIATION IS A JOURNEY THE BEGINNING OF INITIATION IS PASSING A THRESHOLD THE PROCESS OF INITIATION IS A GRADUAL ACT OF PENETRATION SUPERFICIAL SELF-KNOWLEDGE IS THE OUT-SPACE DEEP (MALE) SELF-KNOWLEDGE IS THE IN-SPACE The image schemas of CONTAINER, PATH, ATTRACTION, etc. already cohere logically in the plot-mnemonic as parts of a single scenario, which allows their coherence to spill over to the metaphors. This interrelates the metaphors within one story logic. The spatialized plot-gene may thus function as a unifying substrate to integrate the metaphors symbolic meanings. Moreover, metaphor networks may be organized by what I have called a nodal domain (Kimmel, 2004), that is, a unifying source or a target domain in which multiple predications meet. Both kinds of node are found here and both tie attributes together. First, one conspicuous occurrence are Conrads multiple predications on the nodal target domain of wilderness. WILDERNESS IS FEMALE WILDERNESS IS ANIMAL WILDERNESS IS PASSIONATE WILDERNESS IS SEDUCTIVE WILDERNESS IS ENIGMATIC WILDERNESS IS PATIENT WILDERNESS IS DARK AND HIDDEN WILDERNESS IS A CAPTIVATOR WILDERNESS IS DANGER WILDERNESS IS DEATH WILDERNESS IS AN AVENGER WILDERNESS IS A DREAM/HYPERREAL WILDERNESS IS TIMELESS/PRIMEVAL WILDERNESS IS A REALM OF KNOWLEDGE AND POWER
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The many predications on Africa cluster into a dense and emotion-saturated representation of what wilderness is, an attribute bundle. (Europes complementary attributes are found in the text itself or easily inferred). Through this attribute bundle the space of wilderness comes alive; it creates an encompassing higher-level personification, WILDERNESS IS A PASSIONATE AND VIGOROUS AGENT. Although some attributes such as enigmatic and patient are at first glance not easily subsumed under passion, Conrad in fact creates a trope to the effect that there lies great anticipated power in patience and stillness. (The less-connected aspects remain death, dream, and knowledge but may perhaps add to this in a depth-psychological perspective.) A second way in which attributes are brought together is through the multiple use of a recurrent source domain, darkness. Rather than mixing simple qualities, Conrad uses darkness as a symbolic node to forge together entire associative fields regarding initiation, death, knowledge, eros, and power in a complex way. Overall, I found the following, mostly conventional metaphors and metonymically inspired metaphors connected with darkness: DANGER IS DARKNESS THE HIDDEN IS DARK COMFORT IS DARKNESS EVIL IS DARK LOSS OF SPIRITUAL ORIENTATION IS DARKNESS IRRATIONALITY IS DARKNESS MADNESS IS DARKNESS DEATH IS DARKNESS SENSUOUSNESS IS DARKNESS CAPTIVATING EFFECTS ON MIND AND SOUL ARE DARK FORCES These multiple metaphorical uses of darkness hang together by belonging to Conrads complex and idiosyncratic concept of irrational and archaic male knowledge. Summing up, both the target domain nexus of wilderness and the source domain nexus of darkness are (partly) organized through higher-level metaphors, namely WILDERNESS IS A PASSIONATE BEING and GENUINE MALE KNOWLEDGE IS DARK KNOWLEDGE. Note that speaking of attribute mixes here is somewhat misleading, because each of the themes brought into the nodal domain in activates a complex cultural theory as its background. Therefore, the intricate texture of metaphors is in neither case exhausted by an analytic formula nor can the full wealth of extended metaphorscapes ever be captured in this way.
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Imagistic Frames Merge Spatial and Propositional Metaphors How, then, do schematic plot structure and rich attributes hang together? We can connect these types of metaphors in a hybrid model that predicates nonspatial attributes onto the spatialized frame of the event structure. What I will propose has a precursor in Hawkins (2001) notion of iconographic frame of reference, which he defines as a common mode of textual representation that presents simplistic images of our experiences and does so in such a way as to underscore familiar values. The function of iconographic reference frames is to organize ideology (cf. Frank & Susperegi 2001, Sandikcioglu 2001) by aligning multiple semantic attributes imagistically along a spatial axis (e.g., an UPDOWN scale). Hawkins illustrates this coherence-generating mechanism through Hitlers Mein Kampf. Hitler invokes a multiple metaphorical equation of the Jews with the color black, parasites, and death at the one end of a scale and a corresponding equation of the Aryans with light color, human beings, and life at the other end. All three sets of scalar classifications are aligned so that the Aryans come at the top (= good) and the Jews at the bottom (= bad). Hence, the reference frames of light versus dark, higher versus lower beings, and healthy bodies versus parasites can be superimposed on a single evaluative UPDOWN scale. In this and similar ways, an iconographic frame of reference functions as a conventionalized semantic system within which focal images are organized hierarchically (Hawkins, p. 34). What is of particular interest for my present purposes is that all three metaphorical axes of Nazi ideology can be compressed into a unified image with opposing attribute bundles sitting at each end. In other words, in my reading of Hawkins what happens in an iconographic frame is a saturation of imagery with propositional knowledge. Heart of Darkness employs just this kind of fairly simple imagistic grid for aligning semantic attributes. We can best imagine the attributes enriching the spatial image (here: a narrative plot-gene) by being placed into it. The constituents of this mix correspond to two different types of metaphor: propositional metaphors creating the symbolic attributes of wilderness and image-schematic metaphors specifying the action plot. What happens is that the spatial journey layout incorporates the attributes along a binary axis, which, unlike Hitlers UPDOWN, is marked as INOUT. The plot aligns the host of attribute-related metaphors as in Figure 2. Through embedding into this polar topology a number of enriching symbolic attributes are attached to Africa and Europe. Thus, the right sphere holds the metaphors predicated on the wilderness, whereas the left sphere holds its counterparts, the attributes of civilization. My theoretical claim is that two kinds of cognitive material reconstructed by metaphor analysisattributes and spatial representationsbecome confluents in a single representation, the iconographic reference frame. Complex attribute bun-
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FIGURE 2 attributes).
The full iconographic frame of reference (i.e., a plot-gene loaded with bundled
dles are created when attributes like female, sensuous, alluring, dark, powerful, deadly, or dangerous are allocated in the same symbolic space. This has powerful implications for the theory of conceptual structure. Although in some cases it is a real location that brings attributes togetherHeart of Darkness ties them together in a geographical locus (the Congo) and through a semantic label (wilderness)multiattribute spaces can be created in a symbolic, purely cognitive locus. Hence, when we try to imagine attribute bundles and work out the mix of qualities they imply we may use CONTAINER schemas into which they are packed to facilitate this task. Note that this is a use of spatialized imagery for organizing conceptual form that Lakoff (1987, p. 283ff) mentions1 and that all this is also at least partly congruent with the devices of conceptual integration in the theory of mental spaces (Fauconnier & Turner 2002). MegametaphorMoving to the Fringes of the Victorian Self and Beyond In literature, one major conceptual task is the inference of deeper layers of meaning thatas Werth (1994, 1999), Kvecses (1994) and others have demonstratedmay result from dispersed metaphoric cues, which only take effect cumulatively and across phrases or even passages. Following Werth, effects of these kinds are called megametaphor or extended metaphor, although Turner (1996) speaks of parable with much the same thing in mind: The story structure as a
1That meta-image schemas help organize conceptual material is a hypothesis exemplified by Lakoff with regard to categorizing, feature bundles, and event structure. Kimmel (2002, chapter 8) illustrates further conceptual functions of such image schemas.
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whole carries added meaning to what happens at any point. However, what this emergent layer of meaning is and which target domain the subtle and recurrent cues point to is, as a rule, not spelled out explicitly. Megametaphors must be inferred from textual innuendo and by invoking a wholly implicit backdrop of cultural knowledge. But how does the right knowledge domain get recruited for interpreting the incoming hints? What guides the readers search for relevant background models? In this section I aim to show that image-schematic representations of the plot may play a decisive role in this process. Conrads arguably strongest megametaphor implies the self as a hidden theme (or target domain). It has been often noted that Heart of Darkness evokes not only a literal journey into the Congo but a metaphorical journey of Marlows self between the realms of navet and dark experience. The profound impact that the novel left with its Victorian audience can be understood only because it grasped the physical as metaphysical when the plot likens the journey into an unknown space full of irrational horrors to an incursion into a terra incognita of the psyche, the displaced, dangerous reaches of the human soul. When we interpret the journey as a probing into archaic realms of the self, this reading is put together from a set of conventional metaphors, notably INITIATION/SELF-DISCOVERY IS A JOURNEY (OR PATH). It makes sense, therefore, to go looking in some detail for topological correspondences between the journeyplot and conventional metaphors of the spatialized and embodied self. What we know about English self-metaphors allows a motivated conjecture as to what reinforces the theme of a psychic journey. As my analysis will show, the megametaphor in question in fact draws on several conventional metaphors of the self and, with a unique creative twist, ties them together in a single mental scenario. I call these metaphors (a) the axially-aligned (centered) self, (b) the security space self, (c) the epistemic space self, (d) the contained self, and (e) the essential self, and will now discuss them one by one. As Marlow moves down the river he discovers previously unknown and far out parts of himself. This aspect of megametaphor invokes a conventional metaphor of self as an object that is either centered in its canonical axis or not. Following Lakoff and Johnsons (1999, p. 274284) analysis of the locational self English speakers assume that two imagined entities, Self and Subject, must be in the same place in a sane person. In this model there are two dual metaphors for self-controlbeing in possession of the Self and being located where the Self is. (p. 275). Without going into the differences, the loss of self-control is imagined as a fixed landmark region and a trajector shifting inside it, moving to its periphery or beyond (see Figure 3). The more typical way in which Heart of Darkness implies self-loss is that the self moves away from its canonical state. We may speak of an axially-aligned or centered self. An imaginary axial anchor point, a so-called origo, is tangible in We could not understand, because we were too far and could not remember (p.
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FIGURE 3 (1) The self in its original place, (2) shifting to its boundary, and (3) breaking it.
62) and in till I had gone so far that I dont know how Ill ever get back (p. 92). In one case loss of memory indicates self-loss, in the other loss of autonomy indicates self-loss. Both these aspects are understood as structured by a deictic origo and point to a shared metaphor LOSS OF SELF IS DISTANCE FROM THE ORIGO. The locational aspect of the self is further elaborated in what I call the security space self. In this embodied model the self is imagined as a space with a point of origin where we feel safe and at home or grounded, because we control it (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991). In the novel, the models metaphoric entailment EMOTIONAL FORLORNNESS IS DISTANCE FROM ORIGO is most productive. What is called the Heart of Darknessas location and psychic stateis maximally distant from this center of self-security. Third, Marlows probing journey discloses hidden kinds of knowledge to him, as he extends his understanding of himself. This points to the folk-model of the epistemic space self rooted in the experience that something familiar is typically close to the subjects viewpoint or origo (and that what lies beyond may inspire fear, but also curiosity). The conventional epistemic metaphors of KNOWING IS GRASPING and KNOWING IS SEEING may inherently relate to the self, (again insofar as we understand it as an embodied space we control). This in turn dovetails naturally with the previously mentioned conventional metaphor INITIATION/SELF-DISCOVERY IS A JOURNEY, which is also of epistemic nature and assumes an origo that marks the state we begin in. Against this backdrop, Conrad plays on the idea that, even if the core self may be familiar, its outer limits elude our knowledge. Many civilized people find it difficult to imagine the extreme states of mind of which they are capable of and hesitate to identify their core self with extreme behavior. Conrad here anticipates the Freudian metaphor of displacement, that is, the shunting of what clashes with the ideal self to the unknown periphery (or depths) of our imagined self. In seeking knowledge, Kurtz and Marlows move into an initiates epistemic realm set off from the canonical Victorian self, a space the good citizens back home have displaced. Beyond the civilized, the accepted social self lies the realm of the unknown cultural Other. When Kurtz and Marlow turn to wilderness to enlarge the epistemic reach of their
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personal self, they venture beyond this boundary. Thus, Conrad encourages us to imagine that something lurks beyond the boundaries of the perceived self that still belongs to it and, more generally, to assume a global epistemic space (of still unknown size) where different selves are allocated at different axial coordinates, so that a change of experience involves a passage from one to the other. A fourth and closely related conventional metaphor is the contained self: Kurtz has gone beyond permitted aspirations and Marlow, after him, explores this liminal zone, but returns. The zone between Outer and Inner Station acts as a BARRIER, as the jungle exerts intensified COUNTERFORCE. This evokes metaphors of morality that have some bearing on the self. The spatially conceived outer skin of the locational self directly maps onto the metaphor of moral barriers that characterize immorality as straying, losing the way, or willfully taking forbidden paths (Johnson, 1993, p. 44; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999, p. 304). This FORCE-aspect of morality as a bounded and controlled movement may metaphorically overlap with the force of reason that keeps emotions in check. Of emotion and rationalityapparently both aspects of the selfone is usually thought of as a FORCE AGONIST vying with an ANTAGONIST (Kvecses, 2000). Putting all these aspects together, the implication is that there is a TRANSGRESSION of the barrier. Although it leads to knowledge, the paradoxical side of what Marlow is telling the reader is that the truth of Inner Africa, having shattered the once enlightened Kurtz, should be kept from the nave citizens of the motherland, especially from women like Kurtzs fiance. Although Conrad eschews any straightforward moral evaluation of the extended selfs disclosureonly attained by transgressing moral boundariesit is made explicit that Marlow progresses to a state of deeper knowledge. Here we find a final conventional metaphor, which Lakoff and Johnson (1999) discuss as the essential self. Unlike the apparent self it is our Essence that, ideally, should determine our natural behavior (p. 282). Although our true or real self is compatible with our essence, our superficial self, which is conceptualized either as a not genuine person or as the container the real self hides in, is not. Heart of Darkness lends a new and powerful twist to this standard folk model. According to Marlows metaphysics, deeper human nature, archaic and hidden from consciousness as it is, lies far from the canonical vantage point at the hazy fringes. His model asks the seeker of true self-knowledge to move out of a civilized and into an archaic self. The element of irony in this is that the periphery from the Victorian Eurocentric viewpoint is also the space of greater essence, as Africa brings out the deep and inner self. This irony contrasts two metaphorical viewpoints, namely ESSENTIAL IS CENTRAL (Europe) and ESSENTIAL IS DEEP (Africa). It would seem that Heart of Darkness mixes conventional metaphors to narrate multiple facets of Marlows becoming self, a self-disguised-as-journey. What is
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striking is that these metaphors can be collapsed into a single scenario-like gestalt. To capture this amalgamation, we may superimpose the image-schematic elements of our self-metaphors on those in the image-schematic plot-gene (the event skeleton of the story consisting of PATH, BARRIER, PENETRATION, etc.). Note how, by grafting the axially centered (or sane, Superego) self and the de-centered (or archaic, Id) self on the plot-gene, the emergent structure of Conrads self-model crystallizes. What emerges is a larger epistemic space of possible selves organized by an AXIAL ORIGO schema, in which two CONTAINER-realms with a moral BARRIER between them are imagined, one of which connotes security, the other deeper essence and truth (see Figure 4). When the self-metaphors join to form the megametaphor they specify a new construal of the plot-gene so as to let us grasp the strikingly new view of the self that Conrad intimates. To conclude, I have tried to show how implicit cultural knowledge may be mapped onto story structure for disclosing a deeper layer of meaning. Readers may recruit (and mix) conventional metaphors of the self for interpreting story symbolism because these allow an effortless mapping onto topological features of the event structure, which the plot-gene encodes. This megametaphorical process furnishes robust support for the image-schematic nature of macrostructures, for any nonimagistic view will have difficulty explaining why a plot about penetration into unknown territory can make us think of an inner psychic process. Focalizing in the Megametaphor A macrostructural plot-gene made of various topological elements also allows for differing construals, that is, for the purposive profiling of particular image schemas (Langacker, 1987) or shifting between them (Palmer, 1996; Holmqvist & Holanov, 1997). What an audience chooses as a psychologically virulent theme will also depend on cultural and historical factors, which create focal zones of imagery in a wider plot-gene. As Harrell (1982) argues, Heart of Darkness owed its
FIGURE 4 Conrads axial self-model of an extended epistemic self-space, in which a conceptual movement away from security and familiarity to more essential, yet archaic knowledge takes place.
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great success to the fact that it reflects an overarching preoccupation of Conrads contemporaries with the maintenance of boundaries; especially those of race, nation, class, community, family, church, and gender. Conrad struck a cultural chord with virtuosity, namely the fear of the Other and the perceived necessity, especially of European upper- and middle-class men, to remain distinct and superior. Late Victorianism was characterized by emerging class conflicts, by social boundaries coming under attack, and by the relation to the colonies being questioned: The sense of being within a social and personal boundary of righteousness supports the pride (ethnocentrism) that permits the association of material wealth with personal grace and civilization. (Harell, 1982, p. 232). We may assume that, because the sociocognitive context led to a preoccupation with self-containment and with stigmatizing transgressions, Victorian readers tended to be stirred by the boundary aspect of the riverboat journey. In the imagistic macrostructure of the novel they foregrounded the boundary zone and barrier and gave it a high psychological loading. More generally, insofar as literature enhances pre-existing folk models, the most potent metaphors of a text cast a spotlight on their time-bound cognitive problem zones. This is supported by Harrells (1982) comparative study of public response to Heart of Darkness, published 1899/1902, with response to Coppolas 1979 film-adaptation Apocalypse Now, which is set in the Vietnam war. Although the notion of the self as a bounded space continues to be constitutive in the late 20th century, the distinctive self-related anxieties of the Victorian age no longer happen to be so virulent. The strongly normative definition of the sane self has lost in power, as has fear of degeneration, the human passions are socially more accepted, racial and gender boundaries somewhat more permeable, and moral self-restraint is neither a class habitus in modern capitalism, nor a psychological precondition or justification of neo-imperialism. Today, the same plot is probably construed without the boundary aspect relating to the self as strongly, and transgression will not create the same dynamics of fear and fascination. Viewpoint Inversion and Irony Imagery also supports less tangible thematic undercurrents in literature like irony or ambiguity. This, I claim, relates to the readers ability to dynamically monitor matches or mismatches between image schemas across a text. An illustration in Heart of Darkness is the overarching mood of ambivalence that suffuses Marlows experience in many ways and stretches through different metaphorized themes (e.g., captivation, domination, madness, self-loss, irrationality, eroticism). This general pattern lends itself to an imagistic organization. What I suggest is similar to the iconographic reference frame of UPDOWN with an evaluative function that Hawkins describes for Nazi ideology (see previous). However, ambivalence or irony needs more than a simple reference frame, it requires activating
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two simultaneously. The general idea is outlined by Turner (1996, p. 6467), when he speaks of an ironic tension between the image schemas of UPDOWN and by Werths (1999, chapter 11) similar treatment of two clashing UPDOWN scales. More precisely, what we have here is known as an axiological schema (Krzeszowski, 1993), albeit of a duplex sort. According to axiological parameter hypothesis qualitative attributes are encoded as a SCALE schema, so that pairings such as strong and weak, much and little, or passive and active appear as positions on a scale of quantity, strength, speed, etc. This scale is usually evaluative in that one pole is canonically defined as good or desirable, the other as bad or less desirable. Given that evaluative dimensions are indeed represented as SCALE schemas, what I propose is that the various metaphors of ambivalence in Conrads novel build up a systematic reference frame of ambiguity that superimposes two axiological schemas, one of which is the inversion of the other. For setting up a doubleaxiology of this sort, the reader is led to perform a cognitive operation of coaligning two SCALE image schemes that represent thematically related but evaluatively opposed pieces of knowledge (see Figure 5). This cognitive effect belongs to a more general kind, which forces us to integrate incompatible viewpoints either in a static image of tension or dynamically oscillating images. I have earlier called this a gestalt switch (Kimmel, 2002, p. 474480), a flipping image in the mind. A double axiology and the possibility of a gestalt switch means that values the reader is initially sure of can flip into their opposite, perhaps to unmask a pretension. For example, the metaphor of a torch as enlightenment can turn into the metaphor of fire as an unbridled passion. Or, the vision of woman as pure object of veneration can flip into an image of woman as an object of lust. We have here not one but numerous ambiguity relations reinforcing each other by virtue of the same underlying double axiology. This allows mapping ambiguities of lightdark on the dominatingbeing dominated or other individual dimensions, so that as entire plot the numerous homologies give rise to a general mood. Raising Krzeszowskis notion of axiology to a higher level, they engender a true macrostructural schema. Ambiguity is not only palpably present in evaluative dilemmas. A perspectival switch on what drives the event with a similar pattern is just as strongly invited. Kurtzs resolve to penetrate flips into a sense of venturing too
FIGURE 5 Iconographic reference frame for irony or ambiguity effects (coaligned SCALE schemas with inverted UPDOWN orientation).
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far; his African experience has promised control, but then by revealing hidden facets of self control is utterly lost. From the point of view of image-schematic construals, note how the former viewing arrangement (Langacker, 1987) on the plot construes action as internally driven, the other as externally driven: The PENETRATION perspective expresses an adventuring spirit in which the actor is self-impelled, while his goal, Africa, remains passive. (Moving outwards in pursuit of knowledge and colonial expansion is essentially seen as desirable here.) The TRANSGRESSION perspective implies the reverse. Here the actor is passively drawn out of his sphere and pulled into another by being subject to the FORCE of passion, by the actively beckoning allure of Africa and its overpowering sensuality, and against a rational FORCE ANTAGONIST that could hold him back. (Moving into the unknown is seen as harmful here, as it entails alienation by going too far.) Thus, PENETRATION becomes TRANSGRESSION the moment the controlling force is no longer perceived as ones own, but that of the wilderness. This ambivalence about which viewpoint he prefers seems unresolved in Marlows account until the end. In the sense that we are asked to imagine the opposing FORCE construals simultaneously (or switch from one to the other) this effect is similar to the earlier discussed ambiguity based on opposing SCALE axiologies. More generally, literature may encode ironic tropeshere meant to include moods such as ambiguity or logical tensionsboth (a) by superimposing two inverted axiologies and (b) by wandering back and forth between a particular viewing arrangement and its inversion, for example two kinds of intentionality-defining forces. Affect Contours and Story Mood We may generally presume that story textures include memory pegs of the respective emotional values of a stage in the plot (cf. Martindale & West, 2002). Thus, audiences may retain the affective imprint of what happenedclimax, denouement, happy end, unhappy end, etc.better than many details. This mood-track of a story involves image-schematic cognition to the extent that image schemas are partly embodied, and emotions or moods conversely activate embodied states, including image schemas. More specifically, the topology of narrated events may evoke so-called vitality affect contours (Johnson, 1999, p. 92). Vitality affect contours are what we perceive over time in our bodily reaction to basic experiences, such as the felt quality of anger or fearthe rush of fear, the crescendo of anger that leads to an angry outburst, the fading away of ones joyful exuberance, which are image-schematic. Although Johnsons examples involve rather short emotion scenarios, extended events may be said to possess a similar kind of affect dynamic, so his analysis can be applied to narratology. Here, an affective contour would saturate a topological image of event-structure with a particular emotion or a blend of emotions with embodied imagery.
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In Heart of Darkness we can detect such a mood topology in Marlows gradually mounting anxiety. As the riverboat journey draws toward the confrontation with Kurtz, the accumulating events builds up emotional tension: First, there is eeriness and diffuse fear (p. 68), then hunger (p. 71), the danger of riverbanks (p. 72), which then culminate in an arrow attack (p. 75) and the death of a crew member (p. 77). The increasing velocity and inner tension signals that we are approaching a climactic turning point. A related source of an affect contour over time is a sense of stillness, mourning and death, interrupted by frenzy at some critical points. This undercurrent of death intensifies as the riverboat journey progresses, culminating with the attack on the boat and the slaughterhouse scenery at Kurtzs camp, and more subtly casting its shadow over the entire return to the sepulchral city and the Intended (Kurtzs fiance). In the final scene, when Marlow enters the Intendeds house this mood is at its apogee, when the piano is likened to a somber sarcophagus (p. 118) and darkness rises (The room was growing darker, p. 120), yet this is only the culmination point of a continuous extended metaphor foreboding death. It begins with victims of Africa mentioned early on, leads up to Kurtzs death and then turns into mourning not only over him but, as it were, Marlows own spiritual death as well. A particularly complex affect contour, apparently rather continuous than changing, emerges from effects of embodied synaesthesia (although I leave it open to what extent these are image schemas in the strict sense). Conrad asks us no less than to imagine sensorial opposites as intertwined metaphysically but also as blended in our imagery of the actual scenes. First, Conrad unites stillness with force, for example in this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace (p. 60) or the forest is in grief, but may vent its feelings as violence any time (p. 73). Attributes such as dim, hazy, muffled, flickering, sombre, glittering, throbbing, or faint are omnipresent and suggest subliminal sensations or a hidden presence. Second, Conrad consistently infuses light with darkness or the inverse. These images evoke strong counterpoints: light glitters through the darkness, fire contrasts with the dark, a gesture seemed to beckon with a dishonoring flourish before the sunlit face of the land a treacherous appeal to the lurking death, to the hidden evil, to the profound darkness of its heart. (p. 58). He also blends light with a dark and death-saturated mood as in whited sepulchre (p. 24, p.114). All these textual cues give the entire novel a quite unique sensorial character that may be simulated in the readers mind; it also produces an affect contour of sustained or rising tension between opposites, arousal and preactivation (cf. Burke, forthcoming 2005). Summing up, claim that space logic may act as a structuring device for the changing moods of a story, especially in the light of what was said about attribute bundles as collection of entities and their distribution on a time path earlier. Consider by analogy linguistic findings about how English speakers metaphorically conceive of arguments (i.e., events) and ideas (i.e., parts of these events). It
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seems reasonable to assume that a similar spatial organization applies to affective imagery. Just as individual IDEAS ARE LOCATIONS ON A PATH of argument, the mood connected with one story passage can be understood as located in a particular CONTAINER-like space, and several such locations can be seen as aligned on the overall PATH of the event. Polyvalence and the Connection of Multiple Meanings Image schemas play a key role in allowing multiple readings of the novel, perhaps even by the same person. This feature, often termed polyvalence, is recognized as inherent to literature (Schmidt, 1980). Heart of Darkness supports a wide range of interpretations, including a critique of colonialism and racism, its apology, and feminist, Freudian, and metaphysical perspectives. All of these readings appear valid in their own right but they may also be understood as different layers the novel lets resonate simultaneously or interweaves. A level that stands out rather at once is Conrads outcry against the excesses in the Belgian Congo, despite recent charges regarding Eurocentrism (Achebe, 1989). A layer deeper we get a depth-psychological reading of the colonial encounter, if only from the Europeans point of view. Along an axis merging the political and psychological, the novel can be read as an analysis of Victorian culture and its hidden anxieties that are symbolically loaded on a constructed Other. The Other, a notion inspired by Foucault and applied in Saids seminal work Orientalism (1978) to the mystification of the Orient, expresses the problematic ambivalence of a widespread European mindset. Although Said in fact blacklists Conrad among the exponents of a colonialist mindset in liberal garb, Conrad rather appears as Saids harbinger once we see him as speaking about and not through Marlows ambivalence: Conrads trope of penetration-turning-into-transgression ingeniously plays on the double-edged nature of 19th century imperialism. Although explorative penetration into the Dark Continent and its domination is the missionary imperative of the age, this carries within itself the seed of alienation and self-loss, by dissolving in or by being overpowered by the penetrated unknown. With the immediate political implications stripped away, Heart of Darkness yields a profound view on the self and culture, as is confirmed by Mazlishs (1993) study of other Victorian Africa novels. It plays on archaic fears of identity loss, couched in metaphors of getting lost at the periphery, going over a perimeter (of ones culture), and being engulfed by the enormity of the dark and unknown. In a feminist (and depth-psychological) reading, the Dark Continent evokes the female archetype and the ambivalent feelings associated with it. It is seductive yet incomprehensible, dazzling yet abysmal, of powerful attraction yet alienating, dominated yet dominating. Image schemas of PENETRATION, BARRIER, ENGULFMENT, as well as APART stand out here. The theme of boundaries indexes gender relations, notably because women have the power to guard the
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door of Darkness (p. 26) and thus presumably preside over male initiation. PENETRATION plays a key role in conquering the wilderness, yet, seen in the light of the Victorian sexual anxieties and the fear of a female Other, its flipside appears immediately when, as a consequence of venturing too far (TRANSGRESSION), an image of physical ENGULFMENT is conjured up. Although men attempt to control and to know through penetration, they end up finding themselves swallowed and dominated, notably via strong sensual impressions. Female sensuality is equated with the Dark Continent. Both rouse male anxieties of being engulfed by the dominated object, which is their source of fascination, greed, and lust. Typical of this fear is that the self-impelled FORCE of curiosity and lust turns into being sucked into something as a passive object. Note, finally, how Marlow is torn apart between his veneration for and his uneasiness about women in the position of knowledge and power. His worship turns into a spatial logic of distancing. Marlows decision to keep the truth from Kurtzs fiance imposes on her a patriarchal ideology of separate spheres, a female world of illusion (too beautiful altogether) and a male world of truth (too dark altogether; Hampson, 1995, p. xxxvivii). This reflects the cultural imperative to hold the male and the female spheres APARTarguably also an image schemaalong with the gendered forms of knowledge. From a perspective of Freudian psychodynamics, Kurtz has upset the balance between Id, Superego, and Ego. He has sacrificed his Ego for looking into his Id, and not returned to recover sanity. In a wider metaphysical view, the novels theme is the irruption of the archaic in the human soul. General features of initiation rites are referred to, including elements of fear, hazing, and terror and with this an archetype of mythical narrative that Martindale and West (2002) call the night journey. In it appears the universal structure of rites of passage, symbolic death, and rebirth into a new identity. (From one viewpoint, we might say that when Kurtz dies after having confronted his deeper nature, Marlow is reborn in his stead.) Turning to the imagery underlying these topoi, note in particular how aptly a PENETRATION/TRANSGRESSION plot locks into conventional metaphors of initiation into dangerous, yet original knowledge. Here, a probably near-universal metaphor is GAINING KNOWLEDGE IS PENETRATING AN IN-SPACE (an inner sanctum or separate, marked precinct). This is, in turn, compatible with the sexual meaning of initiation by penetrating and, partly, with the path structure of INITIATION IS A JOURNEY. Such imagistic parallels between a penetrative (male) style of exploration or seeking knowledge and sexual penetration have been variously pointed out in feminist epistemology (Keller, 1985). Let us stop here and consider the theoretical implications of some of this copious material. The fact that so many layers of meaning can be inferred sits well with the familiar hypothesis of structuralism that simple spatial grids organize multiple meanings as analogs to each other (e.g., Lvi-Strauss, 1963). Reflecting this, the polyvalence of megametaphor in narrative may issue from the fact that image
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schemas can be invested with multiple meanings. For example, a BARRIER schema evokes social, gender, and racial anxieties simultaneously in the Victorian psychosocial mindset. Or, a PENETRATION into uncharted lands is at the same time one into the male archaic soul and one into a realm of passion (i.e., the female archetype). In each case the various concrete interpretations are variations of the theme of the Other, a theme whose core is seemingly image-schematic. Similarly, multiple meanings are supported by the image-schematic structural element of AXIAL DE-CENTERING or DISPLACEMENT FROM AN ORIGO. The use of image schemas here is such that the novels political dimension becomes simultaneously psychological, a device used to epitomize the European dilemma of maintaining the self-conceit as torchbearers of enlightenment and pride of creation and at the same time viciously exploiting the colonies. The need for contempt of, and therefore of remaining APART from the animal Other stems from the subconscious fear of irruption of Africa into ones self, and by extension perhaps of all that is not British middle class or male; and it stems from the hypocrisy of an imperialist economy in a Christian disguise. The novels metaphoric ingenuity lies in the fact that Conrad puts his finger on a twofold Victorian self-delusion in one quasi-spatial formula of APARTNESS: Best that the center should not know what the outer reaches are really up toin Victorian colonial politics as in the Victorian soul. Both readings include distancing, because the bad faith of capitalisms geographically externalized social conflicts stirs up cognitive dissonances that are also displaced from awareness. It is against the readers background knowledge of such psychosocial conditions, that the novel can merge political critique and depth-psychological analysis within a CENTERPERIPHERY logic. The general upshot is that an image-schematic gestalt can underlie a literal and metaphoric meaning alike, or even several parallel metaphoric readings (and thereby produce a sense of integration between them). By consequence, a novel may give rise to a densely interwoven fabric of symbolic meaning as long as the various readings use similar source-domain image-schemas and have their origin in a shared event scenario, that is, if they refer to the same plot-gene. By fusing these symbolic layers into a single mental gestalt and perceiving them as interrelated expert readers presumably derive much enjoyment from the polyvalence good literature affords. Novel Inference Through Compound Imagery from Metaphor Networks Finally, imagistic macrostructures open an attractive new view on whence the creative surplus of literature originates, the kind of emergent meaning that takes a good novel beyond cultural givens. As Lakoff and Turner (1989) observe, poetic metaphors are frequently but an artful elaboration of everyday metaphors. However, our novel gains its power precisely because it not only remanifests many con-
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ventional metaphors but because it produces emergent literary qualities of a highly creative kind. So, what is it that happens when literature harnesses conventional metaphors together? As an illustration, let us pick up the previous discussion of the megametaphor that presents the riverboat journey as a journey into the archaic self. I have argued how a reading of the plot structure that interprets it as metaphorical at a global level points to Conrads creation of an idiosyncratic vision of the self by combining conventional elements from English folk models. Recall that readers are led to assemble conventional metaphors into a logically coherent topology, as follows: The basis is the locational self, a bounded space, which naturally accommodates the additional two features of a security-defining origo and an epistemic radius of control. The novel develops this into an extended space of possible selves we can move between. Specifically, the space of possible selves opposes a security space situated at the center and a remote space filled with essence and knowledge. A moral or rational barrier sits between these two self-spaces. Further elements are the metaphors of curiosity and knowledge seeking as a driving force and of espistemic attraction as a pull force; they fuel the movement between the spaces and account for how Kurtz and Marlow overcome the barrier for purposes of self-enlargement. My present cognitive claim elaborates on all this: The inferential power of our metaphor network lies in enabling the reader to mentally simulate the mutual interaction of these image-schematic elements (and their attribute values). It would thus at first appear that when the various contributing image-schematic metaphors are superimposed the result is an image-schematic compound. Yet, this larger gestalt, as all gestalts, is more than a sum of its constituent parts, because relational features come into play. These relational features of the metaphor network are the means whereby an idiosyncratic artistic vision and a deeper psychological impact are achieved. Quite simply, it is only by imagining the individual metaphoric features in their dynamic interaction that we become able to construct the implied model of an archaic self lying in a remote and yet uncharted space beyond the known self. And only through image-schema interaction we come to experience the gradual growth of distance from the center as self-loss. Thus, Conrads complex treatment of the eternal mystery of the Other, its mixed terror and fascination and its psychological power, emerges by dynamizing imagery features in shifts of spatial proximity. A similar relational analysis could be applied to ambiguity effects that require considering forces such as drive, attraction, and counterforce as acting simultaneously or about the implied copresence of entire metaphoric fields of inference (e.g., lightdark) and their relationality. Hence, the emergent creative surplus, indeed the power of the novel as a complex narrative trope, is engendered by the interaction of image-schemas. One theoretical upshot here is, of course, that a merely additive characterization of metaphor interaction in literature remains incomplete, and probably elsewhere too. Emergent structure arising from the interaction of conceptual inputs (cf.
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Fauconnier & Turner, 2002) seems to be particularly essential for a symbolist novel operating in an associative mode.
NARRATOLOGY IN A NEW KEY: THE SKETCHPAD MODEL In conclusion, my case study vindicates a strong role for image schemas in organizing narrative plot. In a synopsis, the following memory-, emotion-, inference-, and interpretation-related aspects of Heart of Darkness seem relate to image-schematic cognition: 1. At a basic level, the macrostructure of the story-event unifies by superimposition the image schemas CONTAINER, INOUT, PATH, CENTERPERIPHERY, BARRIER (i.e., COUNTERFORCE), FORCE ATTRACTION, FORCE DRIVE, and perhaps ENGULFMENT and RETRIBUTIVE FORCE into a compound mnemonic. I have called the resulting gestalt a plot-gene; it can become a basis for further specification, such as by accommodating switching viewpoints between the force-related construal PENETRATION and its flipside, TRANSGRESSION. 2. The image-schematic affinities between the source domains of several metaphors may forge together their wider metaphorical meanings into a symbolic network. Similarly, attribute bundles compress and mix qualities in single imaginary CONTAINER-like locus, such as wilderness. 3. The multiple qualities predicated onto the symbolic spaces such as civilization and wilderness are organized by other image-schematic metaphors responsible for the event texture (e.g., PATH, IN-SPACE/OUT-SPACE); this is called an iconographic reference frame. 4. A megametaphor framing Marlows quest as PATH-like psychic journey employs image schemas to map the storys event structure onto the implicit target domain of the self (in fact a composite of conventional self-models). 5. Focalizing, for example on the BARRIERs transition, highlights cultural discourse foci or individual sensitivities within the wider field of connected metaphors. 6. Systematically recurring irony or ambiguity effects are structured by double axiologies, which align two SCALES with inverted UPDOWN orientation. 7. The flow of mood inheres in partly image-schematic vitality affect contours of the event structure, such as the gradual build-up of tension. 8. Image schemas compress various metaphorical referents into one (e.g., gender, race, class, evoking a common BARRIER schema), and thereby support multiple readings. 9. Emergent esthetic effects and inferences, which transcend what the given conventional metaphors imply, occur when various image-schematic elements are superimposed in a unified gestalt so that new relational features are created, for ex-
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ample, Conrads megametaphor of the other self that emerges as lying beyond the accepted self. In sum, my case study demonstrates just how many facets of literature can be shed light on through the assumption that image-schematic compounds assist in the cognitive organization of macrostructural story models. The readers ability to grasp and further interpret plot globally is rooted in the power of dynamic image schemas to configure gestalts of event texture. From a psychological viewpoint, an application of imagery to plot requires a series of assumptions crystallizing in what I would like to describe by analogy to a sketchpad. Here my model of narrative macrostructures extends on Baddeleys (1986) mental sketchpad model of working memory. I will now take up this notion to more systematically elaborate on what can make image schemas facilitators of plot comprehension.
A Mental Sketchpad for Understanding Plot Basically, the sketchpad principle sees the act of reading as facilitated by the creation of complex and compound image schemas (cf. Cienki, 1997; Kimmel, forthcoming 2005). These are furthermore dynamic and used by readers to keep track of or reaccess plot by mentally assembling, monitoring, and transforming gestalt topologies. On this view, the on-line comprehension of narrative involves a continuous process of text- and context-directed compression, schematization, superimposition, and dynamization of gestalt imagery. A first feature of the sketchpad is that it acts as a so-called elaboration site (Langacker, 1987), that is a frame that spatially configures slots which will eventually accommodate more detailed imagery. Most often, adult readers will start with one or the other default assumption, such as the exposurecomplicationresolution structure that European myths have in common (Bartlett, 1932) or knowledge about genres such as comedy (Sinding, 2004). This knowledge is stored in a not yet highly specified image that lets the reader expect a dynamic activity, protagonists, change, goals, conflicts, etc. Such a still sketchy representation constitutes an elaboration site. My present view therefore reduplicates at the story level Langackers explanation of how sentence constituents are superimposed through grammar. We may imagine that each scene in a narrative fills a local sketchpad, in which an at first tentative drawing is outlined in the readers mind, with features being added until a fuller (if not always complete) picture appears. As the action moves from one scene to the next, the larger mental sketchpad begins to resemble a moving picture in the mind, which may however retain traces of previous scenes. Hence, a reader trying to achieve a global viewpoint (e.g., to contextualize a new incoming piece of information) will be able to activate a sketchy representation of the shape of the overall story, including its dynamics and its causality.
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A second feature of the sketchpad is its construal dependency, meaning that it lends itself to on-line story understanding as well as recall from memory. The sketchpad should not be theorized as a priori static, although the term may suggest this. In on-line comprehension, a sketchpad functions as a medium where readers perform processes of rearrangement, gestalt closure, compression, and various modes of dynamization. However, from the perspective of quick memory access, dynamic events may be construed as a summary scanning (Langacker, 1987), that is, as not extended in phenomenal time to a notable degree. This feature of construal dependency is one reason why I introduced plot-genes as a generative, dynamic, and multipurpose structure, a basis for situated uses of various sorts.
Topology-Based Understanding and Reasoning in Narrative As a psychological model, the mental story sketchpad posits imagistic topologies to explain how macrostructure arises out of local text structure, how the former is organized (i.e., parceled and integrated), and how the imagistic topologies are used for inference and interpretation. I will now discuss these points in turn. First of all, how can dynamized image schemas explain the build-up of story models? Essentially, image-schematic elements have to be gathered in the sketchpad to create an increasingly rich representation usually called the storys macrostructure. Sketchpad elaboration occurs when the reader selects textual micro-cues such as metaphors from a short text span into the readers memory buffer, either because of their salience or recurrence. Imagistic bits and pieces that have found their way into the buffer are then further processed, meshed, and combined. The basic way that meshing occurs is by matching identical and closely related image schemas or by superimposing image schemas with topological affinities which are based on prototypical experiential scenes (cf. Cienki, 1997, p. 7ff), for example, when an element of transition between spaces (CONTAINERS) is imagined in correspondence with a basic time line (PATH) and a mover of action (FORCE).2 Oneinteresting from a methodological standpointpostulate of this study is that metaphors do much work for enriching the sketchpad. Ultimately, the role of metaphor is another empirically testable (and independent) claim connecting imagery and local story coherence. It posits that the imagistic cues are a major part of what guides the matching and combination process needed for midlevel and global story coherence. Metaphor is not an expendable add-on to prior nonimagistic pro2Many passages in Heart of Darkness support the idea that conceptual meshing is based in textual meshing, that is, the repeated co-occurrence of an image schema with several others throughout one or several paragraphs (cf. Kimmel, n.d.). Of course, where such meshing tends to occur, how global representations are combined from local ones on the basis of proximity, distribution, and relevance-related knowledge (cf. Ligozat & Edwards, 2002), and what the role of context is in guiding this process is the proper subject of future psycholinguistic studies.
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cessing; it constitutes an intrinsic feature of story comprehension, from a tentative sketch to a fully understood plot. Imagery is both used in summarizing macrostructure and present all the way down to the textual base. My imagistic sketchpad model also addresses the same issue as the event indexing model by Zwaan, Langston, and Graesser (1995) by asking how the story tracks of temporality, causality, intentionality, space, and emotions are represented. It is conceivable that readers monitor the rough outlines of an event globally as a compound mental topology, hence as a gestalt that makes various tracks commensurate. The sketchpad, being an elaboration site, permits that multiple story tracks (and their relations) are inscribed into a single topology. For instance, a FORCE image for causality may be combined with CONTAINER images standing for states or locations and FORCE ATTRACTORS/REPELLANTS standing for intentionality. The sketchpad model of narrative is one of topology-based reasoning, as applied by psychologists (e.g., Langston, Kramer, & Glenberg, 1998) and cognitive linguists (Grdenfors, 2000; Holmqvist & Holanova, 1997). Extending on Baddeleys (1986) mental sketchpad model of working memory, it is assumed that text-related pointers are set up in a spatial matrix and that the contiguity between them is used to infer new relations. In our present application to narrative, readers activate imagery lattices to monitor potential information overlaps between text segments, to link metaphors and cultural models into a higher-level structure, and to produce novel inference. In other words, readers actively search for and mentally simulate matches between imagistic story features they have read. Glenberg and Robertson (2000) call such imagistic features affordances. Their three-stage model of language comprehension in (local) context offers an instructive analogy for my more global analysis: First, words and phrases are indexed to perceptual or mental objects. These are then scanned for their affordances. Finally, the affordances are meshed and combined in a mental simulation. For example, the phrase Art used the chair to propel himself across town is difficult to simulate, because a combination of chairs and our bodies does not afford that. Although this model describes simple physical events without interpretive meaning, my analysis of more elaborate story logic suggests a similar process of meshing, perhaps under multiple constraints combining local and global plot as well as interpretive meanings emanating from both. In my view, the readers interpretative search for meaning is guided by running a trial simulation of how well imagistic units produce matches, overlaps, salient clashes or any other kind of interesting inference against the backdrop of domain-related knowledge. This is nicely compatible with Barsalous (1999) proposal that individual schemas called simulators can combinatorily and dynamically create more complex schemas up to almost any level of abstract cognition. An application of this affordance matching process to a purely symbolic kind of meaning, that is, the interaction of features that are spatial only in a metaphoric sense, has
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been discussed at length with regard to the complex self-megametaphor in Heart of Darkness.
CONCLUSION The aim of the preceeding analysis was a close textual demonstration of the many ways that image schemas can jointly produce complex constraints for understanding narrative events and for how we attach to them a deeper, symbolic meaning. Much as structuralist approaches, my view specifies how various levels of textual knowledge are matched and interwoven into a symbolic fabric. At the same time, it goes beyond structuralism in that it specifies an (empirically demonstrable) cognitive format that underpins macrostructural text coherence. Compared to the part of empirical text psychology that still works under a propositional paradigm, the sketchpad model addresses macrostructure with greater sensitivity to several cognitiveesthetic effects. Because imaginative resources play a minor role in the propositional view, it cannot account for the fact that reading is often an embodied activity, by virtue of kinesthetic source domains of metaphors, synaesthesia, or interwoven sensorial attribute qualities. This last limitation is especially serious when it comes to understanding particular story moods, the embodied simulation of emotion, or the role of arousal in reading (Burke, forthcoming 2005; Currie, 1995). In short, the possibility that we perform simulations of perceptual, introspective, and proprioceptive states while reading is disregarded wholesale (cf. Barsalou, 1999). By the same token, any view that does not focus on metaphor or analyzes it without a refined sensitivity to image schemas will miss the connections between imagery and megametaphor or other global interpretive possibilities of event texture, as well as inferential constraints rooted in such topological thought. A related benefit of the sketchpad view is the assumption of format continuity between local and global text processing. For one thing, only this allows explaining iconic correspondences between form and content (Lakoff & Turner, 1989). On the methodological side, it is useful to analyze story macrostructure as accruing from local elements in a process of analog feature reduction, while circumventing some numinous reformatting from metaphorical images to another kind of higher-level meaning. Thus, where conceptual metaphor is present, a bottom-up compositional analysis is possible (at least for heuristic purposes) by distilling recurrent image schemas from linguistic metaphors in the text and sketching them out in a composite graph. On top of this, format continuity is an asset for cognitive theory because imagistic views provide a sounder answer, or an irreducible part of the answer, to the symbol grounding problem (cf. Glenberg & Robertson, 2000). The view outlined here, when properly developed, offers similar notational possibilities as the propositional view (cf. Kintsch, 1998, p. 91f). Minimally, my anal-
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ysis is a sort of existence proof that a bottom-up compositional analysis cannot only be put into practice by virtue of propositional argument overlap that creates macropropositions but also by image schema extraction, combination, and reconfiguration that creates macrogestalts. At the same time, choosing image schemas as focal points for the analysis of complex narrative meaning invites further psycholinguistic operationalization. One step will be to empirically address the general issue of how people create image-schematic compounds and to what extent these are cognitively real. A concurrent step is to test whether stories evoke global contours and if these are used as plot mnemonics in the minds of readers. A current project of mine is dedicated to testing whether (a) readers consistently match simple plots with visual depictions of image schemas. A planned follow-up will tackle the issue of whether (b) these associations really target the macrostructure and (c) are performed on-line. Of course, other claims suggested in this article may be tested as well. This includes the claims relating to the role of metaphor in the build-up of macrostructure and, independently of this, my general suggestion that image schemas facilitate mood and affect contours, megametaphoric readings, etc. I would therefore like to close by expressing the hope that my demonstration of the theoretical scope of image schemas in cognitive, esthetic, and cultural analysis of narrative will lead to a surge of empirical research.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Wolfram Aichinger, Michael Burke, Geoffrey Edwards, Ray Gibbs, Veronika Koller, Zoltn Kvecses, Todd Oakley, and Michael Sinding for their valuable comments for revision.
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15!!! Kimmel - Macro Structure in Heart of Darkness

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This article was downloaded by: [Natalia Muntean] On: 12 September 2011, At: 05:35 Publisher: Psychology Press

Metaphor and Symbol

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The image-schematic plot-gene of the overall event structure.

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