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SAGGI
Affective Space and Emotional Time: Learning
from Lǐ Bái ( ) and Lǐ Qīngzhào ( 照)
PATRICK COLM HOGAN
University of Connecticut
Abstract
The cognitive processing of space and time has been widely researched in cog-
nitive science. In recent years, our understanding of these topics has been ad-
vanced not only through traditional neurocognitive approaches, but also by
research in embodied cognition, enactivism, and related frameworks. How-
ever, leaving aside a few areas, such as certain parts of memory research, this
work has largely ignored emotion. In What Literature Teaches Us About
Emotion, I have argued that literature often provides us with valuable, eco-
logically rich depictions of cognition and emotion in lived experience and thus
may play a role in cognitive and affective science. In keeping with this view,
the following essay takes up two poems. One focuses on the experience of
space; the other focuses on the experience of time. Both emphasize the bearing
of emotion on such (spatial or temporal) experience. The analysis of these
poems, when combined with research findings in the neuroscience of space
and time, suggests ways of furthering our understanding of such topics as
spatial orientation, body image, and the experience of time dilation and con-
traction.
Keywords: emotion; space; time; Lǐ Bái; Lǐ Qīngzhào.
