Living and Knowing an Imaginary World

The lived/known distinction illuminates various aspects of the three previous articles. Doris Wallace's work reveals that reflections by the novelist Dorothy Richardson resulted in a gender-specific theory of experience, a theory shaping both the form of her novel and the thinking of her major character. Richardson also displayed the roots of an adult's metaphor--roots in lived childhood experience and adolescent reflection. Sara Davis made visible the process by which a reader reflected on the lived experience of a story, constructing meaning through conscious designation of symbols. Margery Franklin's article on the changing role of titling in Melissa Zink's sculpture showed how reflections on past creations allowed the artist to take control of a previously unnoticed aspect of the medium. The discussion of titling as cross-modal "metaphorizing" suggested that the lived experience created by a work's elements is not restricted to the sense modality of the elements. Davis and Franklin pointed out that audiences may experience the same work differently, a phenomenon often explained through a construction process. This commentary proposes a view more in line with direct perception theory: Audiences enter an already constructed imaginary world, may miss parts of it, may become more attuned to previously unnoticed aspects after reflection. As an artwork is lived, audiences are transported to an imaginary world, in which they have no personal responsibility--one reason why people seek art for refreshment and renewal

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Linguistics · Metaphor · Perception · Phenomenon · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · The Imaginary · Aesthetic Perception and Analysis · Art Education and Development · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Philosophy · Psychology

• The Act of Reading

  Wolfgang Iser•The act of reading•1980

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• An Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior

  Fritz Heider, Marianne L Simmel et al.•The American Journal of Psychology•1944

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• Blind People Depicting States and Events in Metaphoric Line Drawings

  John M Kennedy, Ramona Domander•Metaphor and Symbolic Activity•1986

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