The Present Tense in The Text World of Truman Capote's " A Christmas Memory" A Cognitive Perspective

Abstract

#Application of the cognitive tools, within the field of Cognitive Poetics, to the study of literary works has promised to be a fruitful line of research in recent years. By borrowing insights from the emerging field of Cognitive Poetics in general, and Paul Werth's Text World Theory (henceforth TWT) in particular, the paper seeks to provide a further investigation into the workability of Werth's model to the analysis of the complex structure of Truman Capote's short story, "A Christmas Memory". The historical as well as the simultaneous present tense choices, and the two integrated voices that frame the narrative line of the story prompt the investigation a challenging exercise. The paper in three parts proposes to present (1) a brief introduction summarising the growth of stylistics against which TWT was evolved, (2) an outline of the salient features of TWT and (3) a systematic analysis of the complex conceptual structure of Capote's autobiographical narrative.