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"Never Land": Where do imaginary worlds come from?

Sue Llewellyn1

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Summary

Imaginary worlds are real and familiar to authors, built from memory elements. These blended experiences create fictional realms that readers perceive as pure imagination.

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Area of Science:

  • Literary Studies
  • Cognitive Science

Background:

  • Fictional worlds are often perceived as entirely separate from reality.
  • Authorship involves complex cognitive processes integrating personal experiences.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To challenge the notion of imaginary worlds as purely unreal.
  • To demonstrate how authors' memories construct fictional settings.
  • To explore the cognitive underpinnings of world-building in literature.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of literary works, specifically J.M. Barrie's "Never Land" and J.R.R. Tolkien's "Middle-Earth".
  • Examination of the concept of memory elements in creative writing.
  • Theoretical exploration of the author-reader perception gap in fictional world engagement.

Main Results:

  • Imaginary worlds are constructed from authors' integrated memory elements, including experience, knowledge, and beliefs.
  • These memory components are blended, forming the foundation of fictional settings.
  • Readers interpret these author-derived constructs as distinct from the author's reality, experiencing them as pure imagination.

Conclusions:

  • Fictional worlds are not entirely unreal but are grounded in the author's familiar memory landscape.
  • The process of world-building is a cognitive act of synthesizing personal memories.
  • Understanding the author's memory integration offers insight into the reader's experience of imaginative literature.