ABSTRACT
This chapter argues for some mnemonic, aide-memoire role for maximally-vague mental picturing, while rejecting a linguistic mental representation, in the process of reading. It discusses the role of incrementation in reading; Werth proposes that reader perception of discontinuity is crucial to triggering of processes of updating of their mental model of characters, time and place. The chapter also argues that a reader's progressive making-sense of a written narrative does not entail linguistic mental representation but may often involve maximally-vague mental picturing. Mental picture interpretation draws on the imagination. A picture is potentially richer than a verbalized representation. The vague mental picture notion does not aim to explain in the same ways that other extant cognitive-poetic models do. One of the few detailed literary linguistic attempts to engage with the psychological and cognitive literature on reader comprehension of narratives is Emmott, and her proposals merit review here, particularly in relation to a theory of narrative processing as maximally vague mental picturing.
