Cognitive space of literary text

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of cognitive interpretation of a literary text in comparison of prosaic and poetic texts. The poem "Two" by Z. Gippius and the story "Scoundrels" by N. Teffi were chosen for the analysis. The analysis is preceded by a presentation of the main provisions of cognitive poetics, among which the most important can be considered the statement that a literary text is a trigger that generates knowledge associated with the author, reader and artistic discourse. At the same time, there is a significant difference between prose and poetic texts, in which different modes of the non-linguistic existence of an event are found: in prose, “events” are statements that line up in a linear sequence and do not predict each other; in verse, an “event” is a poetic line that predicts the form of the next line. The analysis of the poem by Z. Gippius, taking into account her other texts, leads to the conclusion that in its cognitive space the main concepts of love are earthly and unearthly, and the main method of forming this knowledge is referential ambiguity. The analysis of N. Teffi's story shows that other mechanisms of knowledge formation work in prose, in particular, the characters' direct speech reflecting their linguistic personality and attitude to love as adventures and women's behavior as deals with men who always turn out to be scoundrels. Written at the same time, the analyzed texts demonstrate the difference not only in the creative principles of the authors, but also the difference between prose and poetry. The results of the study demonstrate the possibilities of cognitive poetics, which is becoming an important direction in the study of literary text, both prosaic and poetic.