Towards a Cognitive Poetics of Puppetry

Abstract

Spectators routinely ascribe intention, personality, even an inner life to inanimate, contingently moving objects like puppets. Why do spectators do so? The prevailing semiotic approach is unable to bring light into this fundamental perceptual issue of puppetry. On the other hand, phenomenology and cognitive psychology are shown to be productive when it comes to tackling questions of the perceptual processes involved in contemporary puppetry. A bird’s eye view on the research areas that involve puppetry is proposed and a modified Tinbergian framework, which originates in ethology, is suggested. The research question is then situated within this framework. An overview of the scholarly works relating to puppets and the apparent missed connections between them underscores the need for a unifying framework. Detailed descriptions acquaint the reader with current works in puppetry. The works emphasize the need for tools that go beyond traditional semiotics for analyses of today’s puppetry arts. By applying a perceptual analysis, a cognitive poetics of puppetry is outlined. The assumptions of this cognitive poetics are tested against a first-hand experiential/experimental foray into the practice of puppetry. This thesis thus contributes to the emerging field of studies in puppetry arts in a threefold way: outlining the need for going beyond semiotics, suggesting a productive framework for the organization of the field, and developing a cognitive poetics approach within this newly defined framework to answer the question “How does it work?”