invest the flimsy verbal constructions that we generously call “characters” with a potential for a variety of thoughts, feelings, and desires, and then to look for the “cues” that allow us to guess at their feelings and thus to predict their actions. (2011: 274)
This projection and mind-reading are not only a great cognitive toolkit for the readers to understand and appreciate the characters, but they also contribute to a real-life model of cognition between the characters within the storyworld. It accounts for why and how the characters are able to understand each other, develop sympathies or antipathies, and anticipate other characters’ feelings and possible future reactions.38
Palmer heavily draws on Uri Margolin’s ideas and concepts on character and character construction, and Margolin, in turn, seems to employ an integrated model from different concurrent approaches on character presentation. Palmer refers to Margolin’s typology39 of character where Margolin introduces diverse types of character representation ranging from character as a grammatical unit/person to the other end of the scale, character as a fictional being. The last one marks out the type of approach Palmer likes to apply to characterisation. The only fault Palmer finds with a characterisation technique such as Margolin’s is that in this approach the dispositions of characters are seen as belonging to the ←44 | 45→subject area of characterisation, and the mental events are seen as belonging to the subject area of thought presentation. Consequently, these two are dealt with separately. Palmer proposes to establish one subject area designated for both concepts, as characterisation and thought-representation are more interlinked than what has been realised up until now.
While making use of different frameworks and toolkits from different approaches in order to assemble his own, Palmer realises that the cognitive turn provides him with a lot of advantages for his ideas. He becomes very intrigued by its context-oriented emphasis and focus on human cognition in different levels of the narrative. Palmer uses the term cognitive sciences in its “broad sense”.40 What makes a cognitive turn in sciences in general, and in narrative theory in particular, all the more attractive to Palmer is the concept of frames and scripts commonly used within this paradigm. The idea that narratives are ordered contextually by frames or schemata and scripts is in accord with Palmer’s approach of reconstructing patterns through given clues from the text. In The Encyclopaedia of Narrative Theory Jahn states: “Frames and scripts specify ‘defaults’ to encode expectations, ‘nodes and relations’ to capture categories and hierarchies, and ‘terminals’ and ‘slots’ to provide data integration points…” (68). To Palmer, in a fictional storyworld, cognitive “frames” and “scripts” construct not only the storyworld but also the fictional mind. They “encode” the clues in the text, and the “nodes and relations” to capture categories and hierarchies, which are, to Palmer, foremost manifested in the construction of interaction between characters and ultimately in the construction of intermental units. Palmer’s target area is more specific than Jahn’s; he concentrates not on the entire storyworld but only on its inhabitants. He applies the concepts of frames and scripts to encode the construction of the mentality of the characters in the narrative in order to determine their expectations and motivations and to analyse their dynamics within groups.
One more component in the eclectic approach Palmer combines in order to emphasise his approach is focalisation. Palmer puts a great deal of emphasis on focalisation and states that it “is clear that the concept of focalisation is crucially relevant to the study of fictional minds because it is concerned with the decisions that readers make about which consciousness is being presented in ←45 | 46→the text at any one time” (2004: 48). Focalisation determines “who perceives” at any given moment in the narrative and thus the focaliser can be said to be a medium between the reader and the storyworld. Thus, Palmer acknowledges that focalisation is very helpful in explaining or representing a storyworld through the perceptual viewpoint of the characters’ consciousness. Apart from the limitations caused by the over-dependent on a narrator figure (mentioned before41), what he finds fault with is the confusion, in some narratives, between the perspective rendered by the character and the narrator. At the same time, Palmer argues that the current debates about and around focalisation are mainly focused on perception and leave out very important factors such as cognition and emotion in the construction of the fictional consciousness. Because of these two shortcomings, Palmer does not rely heavily on the concept of focalisation but handpicks its major argument as a complementary paradigm to the other paradigms he uses for the construction of the fictional mind.
Drawing on these paradigms and disciplines Palmer provides his picture of a reconstruction of fictional minds. He finds a balance between different views and discourses in the cognitive sciences in order to achieve a more thorough theory of the representation of consciousness in narratives. One of these achievements consists of finding a balance between intentional acting and a more private thought or interior thinking that goes on in the mind. Palmer’s ideas come close to, and are influenced by, Lubomir Doležel’s ideas, but Palmer contends that even Doležel does not see thought and action as being equally important. It is true that Doležel acknowledges a relationship between the two concepts and he states: “[a];ll mental faculties, from sensory perception to emotionality to thinking to remembering and imagination, operate between the poles of intentional acting and spontaneous generation” (1998: 73); yet, Palmer believes that Doležel favours the former pole. Palmer bids for a more balanced approach where the (fictional) mind could be analysed not only through fantasies, free associative thinking, stream of consciousness and interior monologue, but also through an extension towards the other pole, as suggested by Doležel. Here the mental states would be presented in a more functional way where they fulfil information-processing and goal-orienting functions. According to Palmer, once we combine the states of mind and their functions, we are able to have a much better understanding of the whole fictional mind.
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This turn towards a more functional role of consciousness would also undo the restriction so many theories instigate by insisting on a language-based thought concept. Though verbal thought is important and does play a role in the representation of fictional minds, there is by no means any theory of construction thereof in any approach available. There is a great portion of the fictional mind that is based on the non-verbal version of thought. Needless to say one should not dismiss the role of language altogether. Despite the fact that cognitive science seems primarily to be occupied by scripts, frames, blends and concepts where at first glance language does not seem to have a central role, it is just one of the cognitive tools among others that help shape the fictional mind. The discussion of non-verbal consciousness is one of the most important issues of debate within cognitive studies. Fludernik in her Fictions of Language (1993) opens up the discussion to allow a schematic representation of language that incorporates thought as well. With such a cognitive viewpoint, like the one she suggests, one could analyse the speech and thought processes of characters in fiction by means of language and linguistic devices. This cognitive framework facilitates a much broader access to the consciousness of fictional characters than the older theories since:
[w];hat is important is the gist of the reported utterance in compressed and idiomatic form. In literature, however, expressive devices, particularly because of their predominant deployment for the representation of consciousness, trigger a reading of point of view and character’s voice, which in turn produces the illusion of immediacy of presentation, of a quasi-literal transcription of consciousness. (Fludernik 1993: 429)
Two of the closest related terms in this category, as mentioned before, are experientiality and qualia. Considering that Palmer’s
