ABSTRACT
The aesthetics and applications of silence and meaning are explored through a cognitive stylistic framework based on Text World Theory (Werth 1999, Gavins 2007), Stockwell’s (2009, 2011) model of literary resonance, and Schema Theory (Schank and Abelson 1977, Semino 1997) which is used to analyse the mechanisms by which Andrew Waterhouse activates worlds of the unsaid in the poem ‘Not An Ending’. Cognitive stylistic approaches have been widely used in the analysis of literary texts including poetry, and the author had previously used Text World Theory as the basis of cognitive stylistic analyses of ambiguity, liminality and the fantastic (McLoughlin, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2019, 2021). This development explores how attentional aspects (see also Stockwell 2009) and experiential schema can be used to explain and analyse the formation of different versions of text-worlds which emerge as the reader fills gaps and silences with schematic and contextual knowledge. The application of this body of theory will demonstrate the world-building effects of scripts and schema, the mechanisms by which readers can recover or reconstruct the unsaid in texts, and how the use of disnarration can offer a potent creative strategy.
