체험주의 관점에서 바라본 그림책의 상상적 경험

Abstract

This paper aims at studying imaginative experience in picture book reading from the perspective of experientialism. For this purpose, the theory of experientialism has been reviewed, and readers’ imaginative experience has been looked into from the perspective of experientialism. While objectivism supports a dichotomy of reason and the body, experientialism holds that human imagination and formation of meaning are created by the human body per se. Experientialism has influenced cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology, and it also provides theoretical foundation for cognitive poetics, an approach for literary study. From the standpoint of experientialism, appreciation of picture books differs from that of general literary works. While appreciating picture books, readers feel imaginative experience within the context of mutual complementation of narratives and pictures. This imaginative experience obtained from picture books is based on image schemes created by the repeated occurrence of readers’ physical experience and their metaphoric projection. The above-stated process can be identified in the process of reading the picture book, The Universe Hotel. The book is a literary work which helps readers manifest embodied imagination by taking advantage of the mutually complementary relationship of narrative texts and pictures. Appreciating The Universe Hotel, readers come to understand the world of narrative texts by undergoing imaginative experience which depends on forming an “image scheme of above and below,” and projecting a metaphoric expression of “Happiness is above, and sorrow is below”.