A las riberas de mis ojos. Reflections on relevance and motor resonance (kinesis) in early modern Spanish poetry

A wealth of creative research on human cognition is currently being undertaken across the disciplines; with an increasing emphasis on a conception of ‘embodied cognition’ that has contributed to diverse cognitive literary research. This article reflects on recent work (predominantly on Anglophone and Francophone contexts) that blends Relevance Theory with an embodied account of language that is particularly sensitive to the kinesic features of the poetic text. Early modern Spanish poetry is generally sidelined from these discussions. Representative poems by the Conde de Salinas and Gabriel Bocángel will be taken, therefore, as a testing ground in which to explore how insights afforded by relevance theory, as complimentary to other considerations, might encourage a deep and transformative reading in relation to the experienced world.