Cognitive Processes and Paralepsis

Case Studies in Two Short Stories by Michele Mari

Abstract

This paper has the dual purpose of outlining the case history related to paralepsis in literary texts, highlighting the different possibilities of application and the narrative effects that derive in any case towards a transgressive fantastic alteration, and of trying to update the referential system drawn by Genette in 1972. For that, we will draw on some postulates and principles of linguistics and cognitive narratology, applying them to two specific stories by Michele Mari, Josef K. and Lamento del guerriero, when we will show how unexpected informations offered by a particular character (bottom-up vertical paralepsis and internal horizontal paralepsis) produce metaleptic shifts that dis-locate and re-locate the reading around different attractors that transgress the fictional logic (Remorini 2023).