Review: Embodied Retrospection

This final chapter sums up the study’s findings from three interlinked perspectives. First I reflect on what the case studies revealed about the lyric expression of memory. While the main theoretical reference points in this appraisal are mental time travel and sensory memory, I will also try to draw connecting threads to cultural memory (as understood in memory studies) and the study of memory in literature in broader terms. As part of this discussion, I will outline the study’s main contributions to scholarship on contemporary poetry, especially within the areas of stylistics and cognitive literary studies. Second, I will flesh out the stylistic approach to embodiment that I have developed in the book. Although I delineated my analytical approach with the theme of memory in mind throughout, a central aim of the book was to also offer a model of exploring linguistic manifestations of embodiment in lyric texts. Here I accordingly make suggestions for how to adapt the insights of the book to suit the unique characteristics of a wide range of lyric texts. The modelled approach is also related to the previous stylistic theorisations of the lyric (and embodiment) that informed my thinking in particular. Lastly, I take up questions that were left unanswered or were raised along the way. Since the book is meant as an opening in considering embodiment as a linguistic phenomenon in lyric expression in a more holistic sense than what has been done up until now, I want to be as transparent as possible about prominent gaps and dilemmas. In this way, the final section of the chapter also hopes to provide inspiration for future studies in embodied meaning-making and sensory memory in lyric texts and beyond.