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Cognitive Literary Analysis of Neil Gaiman's Gothic Children's Novels
Mudrová, Kateřina ; Znojemská, Helena (advisor) ; Urban, Kamila (referee)
This thesis pursues a cognitive literary analysis of three works of Neil Gaiman's Gothic Children's Literature - Coraline (2002), The Wolves in the Walls (2003), and The Graveyard Book (2008), arguing for their positive psychological impact on selected areas that characterize the qualitative and quantitative psycho-social development during school-age. These areas include the development of an increasingly realistic sense of self, social development, and a general improvement in cognitive and metacognitive skills. Of primary concern to the thesis will be the age group between six and twelve years of age, for practical reasons limited solely to neurocognitively normatively functioning children of the Western cultural context. A cognitive literary approach allows us to view the text not as a means of single-directional transmission but as an active, multifaceted interaction between a sensitive reader and a text constructed to maximise their engagement, suggesting that it is not primarily the epistemic value of the text but the specific stage of the reader's cognitive development which determines their engagement with the text, enhances their understanding of fictionality and helps to stimulate their cognitive activity. As the foundation for the assessment of the cognitive abilities of the implied...
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