A Cognitive-Narrative Reading of Electronic Literature: Self-Blame Emotions in Queerskins: A Novel (2012)

Abstract

Electronic Literature diminishes the boundaries between different art forms. Multimodal web-fictions, as the second generation of electronic literature, portrays narratives through textual, visual, auditory, and navigational modes. By focusing on Patrick Colm Hogan’s cognitive-narrative theories, this paper reveals the relationship between the multimodal narrative of web-fictions and emotion systems. Furthermore, each mode indicates a different emotionally orienting function of narrative. A case study, Queerskins: A Novel (2012) by Illya Szilak, is scrutinized in order to depict the working memory processes at play during the activation of specific emotion systems, including self-blame emotions. The present research illustrates that the multimodal narratives of electronic works could be considered as the external manifestations of the cognitive processes, embedded in the working memory, during the actuation of emotion systems. As such, various different modes have essential roles in picturing different types of information, perceptions, memories, and imaginations, which are stored in the working memory and decoding those emotion elicitors, which are perceived, remembered, or imagined. This paper highlights how the behaviors and actions of the main character, Sebastian are directed by self-blame emotions, such as shame and guilt, which have been engraved in his mind since his childhood, and how they lead him toward self-sacrifice.