Bizonytalanság, szorongás és térészlelés mint diszkurzusszervezők Mark Z. Danielewski House of Leaves című regényében

Absztrakt

Uncertainty, Anxiety, and Special Perception as Organizers of Discourse in Mark K. Danielewski’s House of Leaves

I would like to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of certain narrative structures and storytelling strategies that are often observable in neuronovels, such as disnarration or free indirect speech, and their possible roles in the reading process. My method of investigation combines cognitive narratology, neuro-narratology, and neuropsychology. Focusing on the structures of narrative composition and cognition, I would like to investigate the processes of sense perception, and their textualization and emplotment in Mark Z. Danielewski’s novel, House of Leaves (2000). This novel is not usually regarded as a typical neuronovel, because it does not focus on one specific syndrome. However, it thematizes conditions such as pathological fear, anxiety, phobia, and psychosis. Danielewski experiments with the representation of these mental states in a way that favors “showing” their nature instead of describing them, and that lends his work a very intriguing form and structure. Examining the ways the processes of perception and cognition get de-automatized in the novel in the above-mentioned conditions allows us to theorize some aspects of the readers’ experience as well. This kind of investigation of form, structure, and storytelling strategies in neuronovels can help us understand how these creative works function and the influence they may have on their audience beyond educating them about the subjective experience of certain neurological conditions.