A Study Of Alice Munro’s Runaway From The Perspective Of Cognitive Poetics

Alice Munro(1931-)is a Canadian woman author writing in English, who enjoys the reputation of “a master of the contemporary short stories”(Englund,2013:3). She won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2013. The collection Runaway, published in 2004 and won the Giller Prize at the same year, was regarded as her representative work. The thesis attempts to interpret Runaway from the perspective of cognitive poetics, represented by Peter Stockwell, trying to make a detailed analysis of the artistic features of the collection and pays close attention to reader’s cognitive reception and understanding in the process of reading the textual work.As a literary theory developed from the late 20 th century, cognitive poetics differs from traditional literary criticism which concentrates on “author- text – reader” triangular relationship. Cognitive poetics does not limit itself to any one of these three focal but to explore a balance. Based on the three main theories of cognitive poetics, that is, figure-ground theory, image-schema theory and conceptual metaphor theory, the thesis holds the intention to study how Alice Munro chooses writing devices to achieve the purpose of foregrounding and to explore the whole structure of the collection which is repeating the same image schema: Journey image schema and Central-periphery image schema. Besides, the employment of conceptual metaphor in Runaway plays a vital role in delivering the implied message behind the text and evoking the emotional resonance out of readers. It is safe to say that cognitive poetics provides a practical framework to study how the reader appreciates the artistic features and aesthetic charm in Runaway. Meanwhile, it also proves that cognitive poetics is of great power to the interpretation of literary text, providing a new perspective for the appreciation of Alice Munro’s works.