Abstract: This paper positions itself on the critical-creative boundary and draws upon aspects of literary stylistics, especially cognitive poetics – the principled study of what happens when ‘mind’ meets ‘word’ and builds ‘worlds’ in response, to explore how engagement with the field(s) might benefit creative practice-researchers working within HE. After defining the term ‘practice-research’ and exploring some of the debates surrounding that methodology and its attendant discourses at present, the paper considers the implications of approaches rooted in literary stylistics for the ‘mechanics’ of creative practice, rather than in terms of ‘post-event’ analysis from the perspective of the stylistician or literary critic, as a way of contributing to these debates. It is in providing a principled and rigorous account of, for example, the way readers engage with text, viewers with film or audiences with performance that literary stylistics and cognitive poetics have much to offer the creative practitioner, particularly in terms of energising processes of principled reflection and exegesis, which will often – always? - accompany practice undertaken in an academic context. The paper will consider cognitive-poetic frameworks including Text World Theory, embodiment, mind-modelling, writingandreading (Oately 2004) and the notion of world-building in general.

Event hosted by the Centre for Research in Linguistics and supported by English CDRG and Seamus Heaney Centre

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