‘Minding’ the Style: Reading Conrad through Cognitive Poetics

Cognitive Poetics works on the triangle of author-text-reader. A main focus is the reader of literature, as a co-producer of the text alongside the author, in an attempt to explain how his/her knowledge and experiences are applied in reaching an understanding of a particular text in a particular context. In this paper several examples of how contextual frames can operate in a narrative are discussed in three works of short fiction by Joseph Conrad. Analyzed in the particular context of Conradian narrative and prose style are such points as: how the readers begin a story, how they enter into the interior levels of it in order to feel and touch the events in the way its characters do, how they follow every episode of it and, in other words, how the readers ‘comprehend’ the narrative. It is argued that the application of insights from cognitive poetics to Conrad’s fiction is of particular relevance as Conrad is a writer who embodies and foregrounds this very act and process of ‘comprehending’ in his fiction.