Frontmatter -- Table of contents -- Cognitive poetics. A critical introduction -- Part I: Story -- Text worlds -- Cognitive approaches to narrative analysis -- Reflections on a cognitive stylistic approach to characterisation -- Part II: Figure -- Minding: feeling, form, and meaning in the creation of poetic iconicity -- Metaphor and figure-ground relationship: comparisons from poetry, music, and the visual arts -- Part III: Stance -- Deconstructing verbal humour with Construction Grammar -- Judging distances: mental spaces, distance, and viewpoint in literary discourse -- Does an "ironic situation" favor an ironic interpretation? -- Part IV: Critique -- How cognitive is cognitive poetics? The interaction between symbolic and embodied cognition -- Epilogue. How (not) to advance toward the narrative mind -- Backmatter