The Elementary Particles of Narrative

What are narratives made of? That's the question. Mark Turner's explanation of image schemas in the Literary Mind provides the impetus for using the principles of elementary particle physics as metaphors for the merging, splitting, and iterations of complex narrative structures. In my study of the dynamics of filling up and pouring out of bounded containers narrative, I will stop periodically, to look closely at, among other items: paintings by Vermeer, Rembrandt and Goya, poetry by Coleridge and Eliot, New Yorker cartoons—and my own stories.