Textual Worlds of Trauma: A Cognitive-Poetic Examination of Mental Disintegration in The Bell Jar and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Subject Areas :

Manahil Salman Owaid Almnhlawey ¹ , Parivash Esmaeili ² , Zainab Kadim Igaab Igaab ³ , Bahram Hadian ⁴

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Received: 2024-04-15 Accepted : 2024-05-23 Published : 2025-06-29

Keywords: Text World Theory, Cognitive poetics, Mental illness, World-switching, Narrative hallucination, Sylvia Plath, Ken Kesey, Sub-worlds, Point of view,

Abstract :

This paper explores the construction of mental disintegration through Text World Theory in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Drawing on recent developments in cognitive poetics and narrative theory (2015–2024), the study applies a Text World Theory framework to examine how epistemic, deictic, and attitudinal sub-worlds operate in the depiction of psychological trauma. By analyzing lexical, syntactic, and discursive markers of constrained or fragmented cognition, the study identifies world-switching mechanisms that simulate hallucinations, depressive detachment, and psychotic perception. It finds that Plath’s Esther Greenwood is narratively immersed in hypotheticals and modal uncertainties, whereas Kesey’s Chief Bromden is trapped in recursive memory loops and sensory dislocation. The paper concludes that Text World Theory provides a precise model for understanding how psychotic cognition is linguistically and narratively encoded, highlighting the link between sub-world dynamics and unstable point of view in trauma fiction.

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