Creativity in interpreting poetic metaphors

2019

Russian Journal of Linguistics

This article is based on two assumptions which have already been evidenced in the literature of environmental discourse analysis. The first is that the normal congruent active material process clause (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004), if the empathy hierarchy (Langacker 1991) is imposed upon it, tends to represent humans as acting in a unidirectional way upon a passive environment (Goatly 2002, 2007). The second is that much pro-environmental discourse, such as the Worldwatch Institute's reports, for the most part adopts this grammar and thereby undervalues the power of nature as a force independent of humans but with power over them (Goatly and Hiradhar 2016). This article builds on work already done in Goatly (2000, 2007) and Goatly and Hiradhar (2016) on non-congruent grammar, coordination , along with personification and other forms of metaphor, to represent the human-nature relationship in ways which are more in keeping with modern science, and more helpful from an ecological viewpoint. The poetic texts discussed are taken from Wordsworth's The Prelude, Edward Thomas' Collected Poems and Alice Oswald's Woods etc. Besides the use of grammatical coordination and metaphor/literalisation to blur the human nature boundary, they illustrate the use of nominalisations, ergative verbs, the activation of tokens and existents, the emphasis on nature as sayer and experiencer, rather than goal, which is a grammar (and use of metaphor) quite different from the patterns in so-called environmental and news discourse.

PROJECT (Professional Journal of English Education), 2021

The aims of this research are to find out the types and meaning of metaphor in poetry in English textbook entitled “Pathway to English”. The main data of this research are 9 poetry in the English textbook entitled “The Seasons”, “The Little Rose Tree”, “Alpine Glow”, “From Alcuin”, “A Man Young and Old: Human Dignity”, “Love and Friendship”, “Mountain”, “My Star”, and “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”. In this research the researcher applied descriptive qualitative method to analyze the data. The researcher used theory of Parera to classify the types of metaphor and also used the metaphor identification procedure proposed by Pragglejaz to identify the metaphors contained in the poetry. The result showed that there are 22 lines that used metaphor, which 16 lines are anthropomorphic metaphor, 3 lines are synesthetic metaphor, 2 lines are metaphor abstract to concrete and 1 line is animal metaphor. The meaning of all these poetry is about life. By using metaphor the poet can also express ...

2012

The basic idea that grounds the cognitive poetics Program, initiated by G. , starts from the assumption that the process of meaning creation in poetic texts is illustrated by the same principle as the one that guides the "metaphors we live by", i.e. the conceptual metaphors which are the very core of our ordinary language. Moreover, the authors claim that the power of poetic metaphor consists in the poet's "talent" and "skills" to master the conventionalized metaphors in such ways as to consciously "extend", "elaborate", "compose" or "question" the conventionalized metaphors from our ordinary language 1 . Perhaps the most controversial ingredient of this theory is represented by the claim that the four mentioned "transformations" are "unessential" and thus, they do not "invalidate" neither "the generic structure of the target domain" of the metaphor (or of the "target image") nor our commonly shared "model of the world".

IDEAS: Journal on English Language Teaching and Learning, Linguistics and Literature

This research aims to analyze the types of metaphors used and contained meanings contained in a collection of poems by William Blake. A metaphor is a part of figurative language that compares one thing to another. The researcher used a descriptive employed in study qualitative method to identify a collection of classic poetry by William Blake. The researcher uses the theory of Lakoff, George, and Johnsen (2003) to analyze the conceptual metaphors that shape the reality of 'life' which is reflected in poetry. There are three steps in collecting research data: observation, selection, and classification. This research result shows that ninety-five metaphorical lyrics are contained in the ten of classic collections of poetry by William Blake. The data were gathered using a collection of poems from three types of conceptual metaphors: structural, orientational, and ontological. The types of metaphors found in this research are ontological metaphors. And in reverse, the meaning of...

2015

A work entitled "Newton's Third Law In Karmic Warfare " exemplifies a technique, which I call The Paradigm Poem. I will use it here to help with understanding the use of metaphor in mathematical visual poetry. In addition, I would like to stress some important influences regarding metaphor in my work as well as show an analytical list of metaphor mappings done in a method taught by cognitive scientists George Lakoff and Raphael Nunez. Introduction to the Paradigm Poem In this short paper I would like to analyze the metaphors in the aesthetic work titled, “Newton’s Third Law In Karmic Warfare. ” This piece uses a technique that I call “The Paradigm Poem”. The “Paradigm Poem ” is a classification for a mathematical poetry method that borrows its structure from an existing equation of scientific or cultural significance and maps metaphoric content into that structure. In general,

2012

Images, abstracts and sound expressions form an intricate yet clear pattern in the “weighty” relationship shared by the human “crowd” well connected to one another in Human Chain, the last collection of poems by Seamus Heaney. Another important partner in forming the chain is Nature. With all its “tousled verge” and “Midge veils” – the typical Irish flora and fauna – nature and her elements are represented as the ones “pinched and cinched”, in order to attribute living qualities to them, so as to establish a live, inter-dependent relationship between human beings and nature. Furthermore, the human consciousness and the self are manifested in these poems, with the poet frequently drawing metaphorical allusions from the natural world of Antiquity. An interplay between the verbal images and the abstract qualities or states of being of the addressees is created, thus unfolding the mysteries of the minds of “I” and “We” – the entities of the poems. As a result, what takes shape is a conversational link between them. In this presentation, we will examine the linguistic structures and expressions used as concrete source domains – the nature metaphors – to understand the abstract target domains – life, death, self-exploration and realisation, love for one’s parents, solidarity among fellow human beings, social and political unrest, and yet others in Heaney’s poetic world. Essentially, Heaney’s world of County Derry circumscribes the people, places, and plants, trees and other elements of the natural world belonging to his immediate external environment. The investigation will be carried out on the basis of identifying and understanding the patterns of “systematic correspondences” – “the mappings” – existing between the source and the target domains. We will mainly concentrate on understanding the cognitive function of conceptual metaphors – the structural, ontological and orientational aspects – and thereafter review how this has informed the groupings of the poems under specific heads or titles. Investigation of the recurring linguistic expressions manifesting conceptual metaphors will also be included. My study will be based upon the study of metaphor in the area of cognitive linguistics.

Al-Farabi International Journal of Social Sciences, 2020

In the poetry of William Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge, P.B. Shelley, and John Keats, it is possible to observe some recurrent metaphors that are born in and stemming from poets' similar imagination. All these poets portray in their poems that the poetic imagination as a constitutive factor in poetic creation, and they take human being's relation to nature as a factor that inspires the imagination to employ mythical and metaphorical modes of expression. Ecocriticism highlights the fact that the literary texts should be examined whether or not they present or study the natural elements and the environment in their narration because romantic poets, who felt the pressure of the modern industrial urban life on both nature and humans, found the refuge in the natural world. Hence the idea of inquiring about the presence of nature in literary works becomes strongly meaningful when English Romantic poetry is studied. Moving from this notion, the aim of this study is thus first shedding light on the afore-mentioned Romantic Era poets' idea of imagination, and then analysing the functions of metaphors in poems of the First (Wordsworth and Coleridge) and the Second (Shelley and Keats) generations of English Romantic Poets through the theoretical lens of ecocriticism.

In More Than Cool Reason Lakoff and Turner offer a global reading of “To a Solitary Disciple” (by William Carlos Williams) in terms of conceptual metaphor theory (CMT). The reading itself is independent of CMT; any competent literary critic could have done it. Their attempt to explain the relationship between that reading and the poem using CMT is at best problematic and does not seem to be metaphoric as specified by the terms of CMT. Rather, their reading takes the form of little narrative that has the same form as one they attribute to the poem. Beyond the critique of Lakoff and Turner, this paper makes some observations about the poem and suggests that it has a ring form: A, B, C, D, C’, B’, A’. Two sentences by Hemingway and a poem by Dylan Thomas are discussed in counterpoint with “To a Solitary Disciple.” Two appendices discuss ontological cognition in relation to Williams’ Paterson, Book V and Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy.