Embodied Space and Language: Harmony in Banville’s Visual Epiphanies

Having demonstrated in the previous chapters that the patterns originate with the visual primitive and are maintained by our ability to imagine space through EFT, this chapter will investigate whether narrative production—the act of writing—has any impact on the cause of the patterns. Tackling issues such as the lack of neuropsychological research on narrative production and spatial language, this chapter will argue that there is strong evidence which suggests neural similarities between narrative comprehension and narrative production. Using comprehension models, particularly Zwaan’s [Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 44, 36−62 (2003)] ‘Immersed Experiencer Framework’ (IEF), I argue that grounded, or embodied, models of language processing, such as IEF, which rejects the idea of perceptual symbols, support the existence of the patterning as a perceptual record. Finally, this chapter turns to the Postmodernist John Banville to explore his works and a demonstration of spatial patterning within them as visual epiphanies—moments when the salient world connects with its invariant in what Banville came to call ‘harmony’ and the salient flux [Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (1986)] suddenly seems to become unified and meaningful in a new way.