ABSTRACT
In this chapter I will illustrate my theoretical notion of disportation based on my cognitive stylistic reading of the ending of The Great Gatsby and the reader-response data discussed earlier. This will be supported by a reactivation of some cognitive and neural empirical data discussed in all the earlier chapters of this work. After introducing the term “disportation”, I will fi rst show how it can occur in a single source-path-goal structure during literary closure while reading the fi nal few paragraphs. I will combine this with the affective theme of “stretching out”. Next, I will show how it can occur at the very moment of closure, i.e. when reading the very last words. Both these examples aim to show that disportation can be facilitated when image-schematic structures become confl uent. In the discussion that follows on the assumed cognitive and neural underpinnings of disportation I will suggest that this highly skeletal cognitive process in all probability occurs simultaneously with mirror-neural and proprioceptive activity. I will conclude by discussing the essentially post-textual, affective-cognitive phases of this phenomenon, followed by a concise philosophical discussion on what the effects of disportation may be and why such embodied phenomena occur during acts of literary discourse processing. In doing this I seek to highlight an embodied secular form of consolation that might compete with the increasing number of disembodied non-secular ones that abound at the start of our twenty-fi rst century.
