The"Mental Models"of Narratives:On David Herman's Narrative Theory of"Storyworld"
The theory of"storyworld",an integral part of David Herman's cognitive narratology,takes"Text Worlds"and"Possible Worlds"as its theoretical basis and recipients'textual cognitive mechanism as its object of study.It deals with storyworld building and storyworld interpretation,which means the way and the process in which recipients construct the mental models of narratives and interpret their meanings.It involves the worlds evoked by written,multi-modal and spoken narrative texts.It explores the way recipients construct the mental models of narratives by referring to communicative situations,real-word experiences and cognitive frames,and specific"textual cues",aiming to reveal how recipients interpret characters'motivations and emotional reactions,and the cultural meanings of"narrative sequences".This paper examines Herman's theory of storyworld from three aspects:the definition of storyworld,the ways of storyworld building,and the interpretation of storyworld and proposes the value of and the deficiencies in the theory,attempting to inspire scholars to attach more importance to its theoretical study and critical practice.