Figure and ground in the poetry of Gheorghe Grigurcu: a perspective of cognitive poetics

Abstract

Cognitive poetics, as a new research paradigm in the field of literary criticism, aims at analyzing the effects of a literary text on the mind of the receiver, as well as at discovering the aesthetic values and meanings that are drawn from the reading process. The figure-ground theory, as a tool of cognitive poetics, seeks to identify and interpret salient concepts in contrast to those that remain in the background, in order to focus the reader’s attention on the writer’s emotions and intentions. This article aims to illustrate the importance of the figures in five poems by Gheorghe Grigurcu facilitating the recognition, understanding and assimilation of textual connotations according to the reader’s own life experience.