Abstract
In an exploration of second-generation cognitive approaches to fictional minds, this essay describes the ways in which B. S. Johnson's novel House Mother Normal (1971) experiments with the evocation of consciousness. The analysis of Johnson's novel provides the basis for a discussion of cognitive narratological accounts of fictional minds. In the course of this discussion, the second-generation approach itself will be put to the test: the metafictional twists in Johnson's novel undermine the illusion that these minds are authentic or real, which raises the question whether a reading based on cognitive narratology can sufficiently do justice to literary conventions and to the artificial nature of fiction. Finally, a heuristic model for the analysis of fictional minds will be outlined. The model combines “narrative modes” with what will be called “cognitive modes,” and it achieves flexibility through “scales” (e.g., from unconscious to metacognitive) and “couplings” between the mind and the environment (the embedded, embodied, and extended mind).
