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Aesthetic distance as a cognitive effect of intertextuality in Dominik Tatarka В‘s novel The Wicker Chairs

R. Zavoianu

Abstract

Recent research with regard to the ecological approach has managed to model the concept of affordances in relation with higher cognition in order for it to be accommodated by the embodied/enactive approach as part of the “4E cognition” theory. While trying to understand the cognitive effect literature has, we treat the Slovak novel The Wicker Chairs as a case study. We apply the theory of affordances to literature. We show that engaging selectively with multiple affordances results in mapping relations of intertextuality in a mental space – liminal space, thus a space in between, situated neither here, nor there so situated in between the text worlds. This creates the effect of novelty which in turn creates aesthetic distance because the reader is no longer immersed in the literary world and the illusion is thus broken. So, the moment skilled intentionality provides engagement with multiple affordances simultaneously a mental liminal space marked by novelty is being built. Our contribution aims at showing that aesthetic distance (the resulting liminal space) can be considered as a cognitive effect of intertextuality. By referring to the novel The Wicker Chairs written by the Slovak writer Dominik Tatarka, we start from the hypothesis that intertextuality can be seen as a landscape of affordances. These affordances are relative to the reader because engagement is conditioned by the skilled intentionality on the reader’s side, meaning that intertextuality is conditioned by the selective recognition thus engagement with multiple affordances simultaneously in a concrete situation by the reader. By treating affordances as paths to intertextuality, a set of relations between the novel and other texts or artefacts can be mapped. In spite of the fact that the above mentioned author has been treated extensively by Central European critique, especially Slovak, intertextuality with pieces of poetry, on the one hand, and the famous group of artists Galandovci, on the other hand, have been less tackled in the past.

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