Schema

Abstract The self is more than we consciously know. Neural and bodily processes of sensory experience, motor function, and emotive forces bind together to create the unity that is both the preconscious and conscious self. These sensate elements are governed by embodied schemata, a level of organization that binds subliminal sensory-motor-emotive processes with conceptual awareness in correlation with the worlds of our experience. Schemata internally structure metaphor by isomorphically creating correlations between its domains. The chapter first discusses the difference between the role of schemata that operate in everyday activities and behaviors and their role in the poetic arts. It shows how schemata bind the sensate elements of cognitive metaphoring in creating a poem as icon by revisiting Sylvia Plath’s poem discussed in the previous chapter, and two further poems by Li Bai and Elizabeth Bishop. The chapter ends by showing how schemata define the different poetics of Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost.