The twenty-two papers in this collection represent various cognitively-oriented approaches to the study of literary and persuasive texts. Their authors include both linguists and literary scholars, united by their interest in exploring the mental processes accompanying the creative production of meanings. Some of the papers, grouped into two broad sections – Cognitive approaches to literary thought and Aspects of cognitive rhetoric – offer new theoretical insights, and others focus on more specific aspects of verbal creativity, zooming in on concrete novels, poems, speeches and media texts. The variety of research interests and points of departure, of the subjects and materials chosen for analysis, but also of the employed methods of research shows that the developing field of cognitive poetics/rhetoric is able to accommodate a multitude of perspectives.