ABSTRACT
Reuven Tsur’s pivotal role in the development of cognitive poetics was initially secured in the 1970s, when he became one of the first academics to apply the findings of cognitive science to the analysis of literary texts. He has continued to write and research in this area prolifically ever since and here presents an analysis of the deictic texture of poetry by Shakespeare, Marvell and Wordsworth, as well as by the Hebrew poets Nathan Alterman and Abraham Shlonsky. This challenging chapter makes use of cognitivescientific knowledge about activity in the right and left sides of the brain to throw further light on the initial responses of students to particular literary texts. The latter sections of the chapter then go on to provide a detailed examination of the treatment of time in poetry.
