Cognitive poetics is basically a hermeneutic theory which differs from other critical approaches due to its interdisciplinary, scientific and empirical base: “Cognitive poetics has been regarded as interdisciplinary (importing the methods of one field into another), multidisciplinary (crossing the methodological boundaries of several fields) and transdisciplinary (adapting the principles of several different disciplines and producing a unique new blend)” (Stockwell, “Resonance” 27). Cognitive poetics benefits from an integral poetic dimension which allows it to capture felt experience in literary reading. The aim of the practitioners of cognitive poetics is to understand the cognition of literary works by applying the notions of cognitive sciences to the study of literary works. As such, cognitive poetics is seen not as a new approach with a whole new set of terminology, but rather as a new way of looking at the already established concepts with the potential to disclose how readers make sense of the literary reading.
