Cognitive Foregrounding through Schematic Knowledge Deviation in Murakami's Kafka on the Shore

Abstract EN

This paper is an attempt to show how schematic challenge can be posed by activating certain levels of schematic default elements across the network of the reader's prototypical schematic expectations.

The triggering of certain levels of detail leads to a process of cognitive de familiarization that takes place through a sort of schematic foregrounding.

This type of cognitive foregrounding brings up certain levels of specificity with varying degrees of overspecification or underspecification.

Accordingly, a schematic challenge might not involve destroying old schemata or creating new ones but all it takes is simply triggering unexpected levels of detail within the reader's pre-existing schematic toolkit.

Murakami's novel Kafka on the Shore sets a cognitive challenge to the reader's schematic expectations in a way that is inherently related to the basic artistic properties of the fantasy literature which the novel belongs to.

Murakami injects his novel with a variety of schematic surprises that go against the reader's established schematic expectations.