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DANIEL T. LOCHMAN, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene

ferent experiences among different readers or in the same reader at
17
different times ; yet textual memories can and do overlap from one
reading to another and recur in multiple readers. 18
Studies of neural and enactive processes offer insight into the
kinds of memories that are more likely to be retained long-term. In a
survey of studies that measure reactions to words of varying emotion-
al intensity and familiarity, cognitive literary theorist David S. Miall
summarizes research showing that emotion associated with the amyg-
daloid complex and hippocampus initiates and directs memorial
processes — both cognitive and emotive — while reading. In a 2009
19
study of event-related brain potential, a team led by psychologist Gra-
ham C. Sco found that “frequency, arousal, and valence all contribute
to the immediate processing of words,” with more immediacy and
salience for negatively valenced emotions; a more recent (2015) study
led by psychologist Sara C. Sereno finds that, though salience corre-
lates with negative moods, the relationship is modulated by broad-
ened (generally positive) and narrowed (generally negative) a ention,

17 Marco Caracciolo, “Experientiality,” in: Peter Hühn et al. (eds.), The Living
Handbook of Narratology (Hamburg: Hamburg University), h p://www.lhn.uni-
hamburg.de/article/experientiality, accessed October 7, 2017.
18
John Su on et al., “The Psychology of Memory, Extended Cognition, and
Socially Distributed Remembering,” Phenomenology and Cognitive Science, 9
(2010), 521-60. See especially 539-48.
19 David S. Miall, “Emotions and the Structuring of Narrative Responses,”
Poetics Today 32, no. 2 (Summer 2011): 323-48. There is no clear consensus on
the situation of affect/emotion related to memory and the brain. Elizabeth A.
Phelps and Adam K. Anderson, “Emotional Memory: What Does the Amyg-
dala Do?” Current Biology 7, no. 5 (1997): R311-R314, theorized a strong cor-
relation of emotions and memory in the amygdylla; more recent studies have
found a diffuse complex involving the medial pre-frontal cortex, hippocam-
pus, lateral pre-frontal cortex, and parietal cortex in the recovery of emotional
experience: see Tony W. Buchanan, “Retrieval of Emotional Memories,” Psy-
chological Bulletin, 133, no. 5 (September 2007): 761-79. Luiz Pessoa, “On the
Relationship between Emotion and Cognition,” Perspectives 9 (February 2008):
148-158, concludes that “the understanding of complex, embodied behavior
necessitates comprehending the strong interactions between brain areas” re-
lated to emotion and cognition.

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