Narrative and Image Representation in the Works of Susan Howe

Cognitively, the use of language depends on the narrative structure which implies both temporal and spatial sequence of actions that follow each other as cause and effect governing events. Literary works rely on the narrative structure as a fundamental element of representation; however, Susan Howe s poetry seems to offer a rather different case. The narrative in the poems of this contemporary American poet receives several blows; words and letters are scattered across the page, and sometimes instead of progressing in a linear course, language is reflecting upon itself and shifts directions. The fragmentation of language becomes a means to deploy image and action representation beside narrative representation. In this paper, the objective is to investigate the manipulation of the narrative structure of the language in Howe s historiographical, revisionist tendency through the lens of cognitive poetics.