The Iconic Power of the Short Story

The Iconic Power of the Short Story

Exploring Culture, Cognition, and
Affective Involvement in Seamus Heaney

Carmen M. Bretones Callejas

PETER LANG
Oxford - Berlin - Bruxelles - Chennai - Lausanne - New York

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. The German National Library lists this publication in the German National Bibliography; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bretones, Carmen M., author.

Title: The iconic power of the short story : exploring culture, cognition, and affective involvement in Seamus Heaney / Carmen M. Bretones Callejas.

Description: Oxford ; New York : Peter Lang, [2024] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2024047616 (print) | LCCN 2024047617 (ebook) | IS BN 9781803744322 (paperback) | ISBN 9781803744339 (ebook) | IS BN 9781803744346 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Heaney, Seamus, 1939-2013—Criticism and interpretation. | Heaney, Seamus, 1939-2013—Literary style. | Short story. | English poetry—Irish authors—History and criticism.

Classification: LCC PR6058.E2 Z558 2024 (print) | LCC PR6058.E2 (ebook) | DDC 821/.914—dc23/eng/20241127

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024047616

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024047617

Cover illustration by Carmen M. Bretones Callejas

Cover design by Peter Lang Group AG

ISBN 978-1-80374-432-2 (print)

ISBN 978-1-80374-433-9 (ePDF)

ISBN 978-1-80374-434-6 (ePub)

DOI 10.3726/b21631

Open Access: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

© 2024 Carmen M. Bretones Callejas

Published by Peter Lang Ltd, Oxford, United Kingdom

info@peterlang.com – www.peterlang.com

Carmen M. Bretones Callejas has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this Work.

This publication has been peer reviewed.

About the author

Carmen M. Bretones Callejas is the Head of the Department of Philology at the University of Almería, Spain.

About the book

“Bretones Callejas is a master of both humanistic and scientific approaches. She shows the great power of combining cognitive science and textual analysis.”

– Mark Turner, Professor of Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University

“The Iconic Power of the Short Story offers readers an interesting, cognitive linguistic approach to literary texts. This approach enables Bretones to explore Heaney’s poems as stories, each with a beginning, a middle, and an ending. Her close readings of Heaney’s poems explore their metaphoric and synesthetic potential, blends, emotional resonance, contexts, perspectives, and themes. Scholars of Heaney’s work in particular, and those interested in cognitive poetics in general, may therefore find The Iconic Power of the Short Story worth reading. “

– Craig Hamilton, Professor at the English Department, Université de Haute-Alsace, Mulhouse, France

“Carmen Bretones offers a novel biocultural vision of Seamus Heaney’s narrative, skillfully combining nature and nurture to depict his deeply experiential poetic composition. She navigates the cognitive complexities of Heaney’s work like no one else, exploring how his stories shape human cognition, language, culture, and social mind. Through her examination, Bretones reveals how Heaney’s artful narrativity contours the reader’s perception and conceptualization, making his poetic short stories socially all-encompassing. Her book has made me feel alive inside a Nobel literary mind.”