Nature, Classification & Function Of Poetical Metaphor

The study of metaphor can be traced back to over 2000 years ago. But traditionally, metaphor is commonly regarded as the decoration of language or one of rhetoric devices employed to achieve the effect of comparison in literary work. Since 1930s, metaphor study has broken through the traditional restriction and has reached a multidisciplinary period since 1970s. The most influential theory is cognitive theory developed by Lakoff et al . According to these researchers, metaphor is not linguistic phenomenon merely; more importantly, it is a pervasive thinking mode and a cognitive means of human beings. This dissertation attempts to apply the recent researches on metaphor, especially the cognitive theory, to explore metaphor in English poetry in a totally new perspective compared with the traditional rhetorical approach, including its nature, classification and function. Metaphor is the life principle of poetry and poetry is closely related to metaphor. Poetical metaphor has the nature of creativeness, inexhaustibility, and coherence. Due to its nature, poetical metaphor has twofold functions: rhetoric function, defamiliarization function, constructive function, cognitive function and aesthetic function. According to the existing form of poetical language, poetical metaphor can be classified as sound metaphor, formal metaphor and semantic metaphor. It exists at any level of poetry, varying from punctuation, word-spelling, lay-out of lines to the whole text. Therefore, metaphor is the mapping from the poet's perception of the source domain to the target domain. To interpret a poetic work, in a large sense, is to interpret the metaphor. Strengthening metaphorical awareness and developing metaphorical competence is the most effective way to improve their ability to appreciate poetry and stimulate readers'interest in poetry.