Abstract

In The Performance of Reading, Peter Kivy introduces, on a purely phenomenological basis, an interesting and potentially fruitful analogy between the experience of silently reading literary texts and the experience of silently reading musical scores. In Kivy’s view, both mental experiences involve a critical element of auditory mental imagery, consisting in having a performance “in the head” or the mind’s ear. This analogy might have significant implications for the ontological status of literary works, as well as for the theoretical relations between music and language. Nevertheless, Kivy’s hypothesis has never been investigated and discussed in its empirical merits. In the present paper, we shall claim that neuroscience data support, at least in part, Kivy’s phenomenological observations about the relation between reading musical scores and reading texts. Despite being functionally and anatomically dissociated at the cognitive level, the two reading experiences both involve an auditory simulation of the content, which seems to be functionally critical for a deep and rich experience of literary texts and musical scores.

中文翻译：

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默读的体会

摘要

在《阅读的表现》中，彼得·基维在纯粹现象学的基础上，在默读文学文本的体验和默读乐谱的体验之间引入了一个有趣且可能富有成效的类比。在基维看来，这两种心理体验都涉及听觉心理意象的关键要素，即在“头脑”或心灵的耳朵中进行表演。这种类比可能对文学作品的本体论地位以及音乐与语言之间的理论关系产生重大影响。然而，基维的假设从未在其经验价值上得到调查和讨论。在本文中，我们将声称神经科学数据至少部分支持基维关于阅读乐谱和阅读文本之间关系的现象学观察。尽管在认知层面上在功能上和解剖上是分离的，但这两种阅读体验都涉及内容的听觉模拟，这对于文学文本和乐谱的深刻而丰富的体验似乎在功能上至关重要。