![]() ![]() ![]() Scotts post-apocalyptic vision was the stuff of legends. Finally, I suggest that the limited mind attribution for the vampires invited through their construal contributes to the presentation of a ‘mind style’ (Fowler, 1977) for this character. Ridley Scott was so close to adapting I Am Legend, there is concept art for his version of the Darkseekers. ![]() Drawing on online reader responses to the novel, I argue that readers’ understanding of these other minds plays an important role in their empathetic experience and ethical judgement of the novel’s main character and focaliser, Robert Neville. In my analysis, I suggest that readers’ attribution of mental-states to the vampires in Matheson’s novel is strategically limited through a number of choices in their linguistic construal. Story: Robert Neville is a scientist who was unable to stop the spread of the terrible virus that was incurable and man-made. I draw upon empirical research into ‘mind attribution’ in social psychology, and apply Cognitive Grammar (Langacker, 2008), and its notion of ‘construal’, as a framework for the application of such findings to narrative. In this article, I explore the application of such research to the minds constructed for the vampire characters in Richard Matheson’s 1954 science fiction/horror novel I Am Legend. For Palmer (2004, 2010), and other proponents of a cognitive narratology, research into real-world minds in the cognitive sciences provides insights into readers’ experiences of fictional minds. In the new film, Smith s Neville is a military scientist charged with finding a cure for a virus that turns people into crazed, hairless, flesh-eating zombies. ![]()
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