Karin Kukkonen
We clearly think a lot about literature, but also — and I guess we all know this — feelings and experiences are important. What could be called cognitive perspectives have not just to do with what goes on in your brain while you read, but also the way in which your body feels and how it responds to literary texts.
Alexandra Effe
Certainly, yes. Do you think you could give us an example?
Karin Kukkonen
Why don’t we have a look at this novel here, which is Evelina by Frances Burney. It’s a novel from the second half of the 18th century, which tells the story of a young lady who comes to London for the first time, and everything is very exciting. She goes to her first ball, she meets a handsome aristocrat, and then she makes a big faux pas. And what we have, in the novel, is actually the letter that she writes home about these events, where she reflects on just how embarrassing all of this was. And this embarrassment is, of course, a physical experience.
Alexandra Effe
I remember, that’s a great scene. Let me read out a passage, and maybe you can comment on it briefly. So she’s at home and writes:
“A confused idea now for the first time entered my head, of something I had heard of the rules of assemblies; but I was never at one before,—I have only danced at school,—and so giddy and heedless I was, that I had not once considered the impropriety of refusing one partner, and afterwards accepting another. I was thunderstruck at the recollection: but, while these thoughts were rushing into my head, Lord Orville, with some warmth, said, ‘This lady, Sir, is incapable of meriting such an accusation!’
The creature—for I am very angry with him,—made a low bow, and with a grin the most malicious I ever saw, ‘My lord, said he, far be it from me to accuse the lady, for having the discernment to distinguish and prefer—the superior attractions of your Lordship.’
Again, he bowed, and walked off.
Was ever anything so provoking? I was ready to die with shame.”
(Frances Burney, Evelina, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 35)
Karin Kukkonen
So what you have are actually two moments in time. As you said, she’s sitting at the desk and she’s writing, but at the same time, writing about what happens takes her back into the ballroom, and takes her back to this moment of intense embarrassment of realising that you can’t say to one person — “Oh, I’m actually not interested in dancing with you” — and then accept the proposal of Lord Orville, no matter how handsome he is. So you have these two moments in time, and it’s exactly that tension that gives, I think, this passage its power. And this is described in highly embodied language — she’s “giddy and heedless” in the ballroom, and then “thunderstruck” when she thinks about her mistake afterwards. And the past and the present in terms of the emotional experience are entwined. It moves back and forth, you know, from one sentence to another, which I think brings exactly the complexity of that situation home, that you made a big mistake and you didn’t realise it at the time. And yes, you’re right to feel offended and the fop is provoking, but at the same time, she has, you know, done something wrong. She hasn’t followed the rules — out of inexperience, but nevertheless, it’s of course offensive. So at the same time that she is provoked, she’s also ready to die with shame. And it’s exactly that cocktail of feeling that is linked to the letter-writing here.
Alexandra Effe
Yeah, it’s so interesting how Evelina interweaves experience and reflections. I remember, I taught Evelina in a course on the development of the 18th-century novel last year. And we also drew on your book for e-cognition and 18th-century fiction in that class. Maybe we could talk about that a little bit? I was quite intrigued by the title, or rather the subtitle — I think it’s brilliant — How the Novel Found its Feet. The novel in your account doesn’t merely emerge, it certainly doesn’t rise, but it actually starts to move — or, maybe better, to allow readers access to movements of mind and body and, in doing this, move readers themselves. Can you talk a little bit about what lies behind the metaphor?
Karin Kukkonen
How the Novel Found its Feet? So, the idea is that the novel sort of finds out what it’s good at when it starts using this combination of embodiment and reflection. And Burney is one of my examples at the end of the 18th century, where this has been sort of fully developed. And we find this technique then later on in the Victorian novel as well — and I think it’s used until the present day. If you go to the beginning of the century, the beginning of the 18th century, you actually see quite a different way of using embodiment, quite a different way of bringing to the fore what characters feel in sort of tense situations. And I’m trying to trace exactly that development. Maybe, let’s have a look at one of these earlier novels, so we can see what the difference is between the beginning of the 18th century and the end. A book that I like quite a bit and that I’ve also taught in some of my classes is Love in Excess.
Alexandra Effe
Right. Haywood.
Karin Kukkonen
Haywood. Eliza Haywood, published in 1719 — so it’s 300 years old, a bit more than that. Published roughly the same time as Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels — and, I think, just as interesting. Haywood writes what is called amatory fiction. So it’s all about falling hopelessly in love, and then finding out that you’ve been betrayed, and then making a big dramatic scene. So in many ways, it’s also thematically different from Evelina. I’ll read out a short passage where Alovisa, one of the young ladies who has 'love in excess', has just found out that the chevalier she is in love with has actually slept with someone else:
“But how, (when left alone, and abandoned to the whirlwinds of her passion,) the desperate Alovisa behaved, none but those, who like her, have burned in hopeless fires can guess, the most lively description would come far short of what she felt; she raved, she tore her hair and face, and in the extremity of her anguish was ready to lay violent hands on her own life. In this tempest of mind, she continued for some time, 'till at length rage beginning to dissipate it self in tears, made way for cooler considerations; and her natural vanity resuming its empire in her soul, was of no little service to her on this occasion.”
(Eliza Haywood, Love in Excess; or, The Fatal Enquiry, David Oakleaf (ed.), Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2000, p. 43)
So, what you have here is Alovisa, who is really upset. But then Haywood says, “Well, actually, you can’t really imagine that, if you haven’t experienced it yourself.” So this is quite different from Burney, who actually sort of performs, in the letter-writing, this experience. Haywood asks us to imagine this, but only if you have actually experienced it, you can do that. But that’s one of the ways in which the earlier novel is different, when it comes to embodied experience. And the second quite striking difference is that Haywood always starts with a metaphor — “the whirlwind of her passion, hopeless fires” — which she then translates a little bit in an embodied description — “tearing her hair and her face”. But it stays very much on a sort of allegorical, metaphorical level of embodied experience. Whereas, in Evelina, we really get this spelled out — what this feels like from inside and out. What’s interesting about Haywood — you might have noticed at the end of the passage that I read, there is this sort of snarky comment about how the vanity of Alovisa was of no little service to her. So she’ll be all right, because she has enough vanity, or... she knows what she’s worth, so she’ll get out of this situation. And that sort of ironic sting in the tail is actually something that — I think — points forward to Jane Austen.
Alexandra Effe
Yeah, we touched on Austen as well in our class, and it’s always great to trace a trajectory, I guess. I’d like to move ahead a bit further, even. We ended on Calvino, and we read If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller. The start, I’m sure you remember. The novel starts with Calvino instructing us to relax, concentrate, to dispel every other thought and to let the world around you fade. The novel tells you, “Best close the door, the TV is always on in the next room”. So, I wonder, from your perspective, how do we respond to such instructions? What do they do to us or for us as readers?
Karin Kukkonen
Calvino is quite interesting, isn’t he? He goes on for several pages on how you should sit, and how you should get ready for the book. And I think, with any factual, nonfiction book, we lose patience immediately. But here, I think it’s a strategy of drawing us in. So there has been some research indicating that when you read about a motion verb, for example, you experience a resonance of that in your own body. So, as Calvino goes through this very cumbersome instruction of getting ready to read, in a way — because of that resonance between verbs indicating motion and experience and what we actually experience as readers — we do get ready ourselves.
Alexandra Effe
This is linked, surely, to the argument you make in your book about the co-evolution of cognition and culture, right? You tell us that novels can increase our cognitive capacities, and that they can allow us to think in ways that we could not without the literary text. What exactly is it, that what you call “acts of fictionalisation” make possible, that is not available in factual texts — or not as much? And how does this lead to new cognitive capacities over time? And maybe also, let me bring in your concept of the novel as a “lifeworld technology”. How does this fit into the account of the co-evolution of cognition and culture?
Karin Kukkonen
I think in all three novels, we’ve seen how the reader’s cognitive capacities and your embodied experience is linked to what you read about, how there’s a sort of very close mesh. I think it’s most explicit in Haywood, when she says, “You need to have experienced this to supply it to the text.” Of course, if you read, you know, many different stories, you experience many different things — and it’s not just about feeling like the characters feel. I think in all three examples, we’ve seen that there is an intense embodied experience, but we’re also reflecting on it. So Evelina is both there in the ballroom and sitting at the desk, writing her letter. And I think it’s exactly in this sort of double nature that novels, or literature more generally, do something really special to our cognitive capacities. That they allow both experience and reflection to go on at the same time. I’ve talked about this in terms of a “life world technology”, because it allows you to see things more clearly, or to reflect on — perhaps — something that’s going on in your own life. In contrast to Evelina, maybe you have been in a similar situation, but resolved it differently.
Alexandra Effe
Yeah.
Karin Kukkonen
Maybe you wish, you know, Lord Orwille had come and saved the day. The idea of technology is, of course, something that we work with, something that extends our capacities — like a telescope or a microscope, these are sort of classical examples of “lifeworld technologies”. And I think similarly, novels allow you to see maybe not further, but better.
Alexandra Effe
Better. Absolutely. So is this then an argument for getting a degree in literature?
Karin Kukkonen
I should think so.
Alexandra Effe
Yeah. And well, there’s sometimes the fear that you might also — by getting a degree — ruin your joy while reading. What do you think is the difference between being a lay reader and a literary scholar? Is one... do you get more out of literature or are you spoiled forever, once you’ve learned how to decode the text?
Karin Kukkonen
That’s a common concern, isn’t it? And there is this idea, that if you look at literature too closely, somehow the magic goes away... Somehow the soap bubble of experience will burst into a million pieces. I think this perspective from embodied cognitive approaches helps here, and the idea that it is always both reflective and immersive, it’s always experiencing. And thinking about what you experience actually points in a different direction. I mean, if you are an expert reader — which is what you become if you study literature, you become a professional reader — then you might see a plot twist coming a mile away. But I don’t think that stops you from enjoying it when it’s very well done. And I think, if you can analyse a particular turn of phrase as a metaphor that’s combined with a metonymy, or something like that — I think that just increases the pleasure and enjoyment of reading literature.
Alexandra Effe
I certainly agree, and I think this is probably an incentive to go and pick up some more books, maybe some of those you’ve mentioned, and to, with Calvino, relax, concentrate and dispel every other thought.
Karin Kukkonen
I fully agree.