A Cognitive Study On Synaesthetic Metaphors In Keats's Odes

This paper intends to explore synaesthesia from the cognitive perspective. Synaesthesia or synaesthetic metaphor is a term of psychology, linguistics, and rhetoric and often called"通感"in Chinese. According to Webster's Third New International Dictionary, synaesthesia is a concomitant sensations; especially a subjective sensation or image of senses (as of color) other than the one (as of sound) being stimulated. Synaesthesia is traditionally regarded as a figure of speech. This paper draws on four theories in cognitive linguistics, that is, Lakoff and Johnson's Embodied Philosophy and Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Joseph Grady's Primary Metaphor Theory, and Fauconnier and Turner's Conceptual Blending Theory. The author inquires into the nature of synaesthetic metaphors and comes to imporant conclusions as follows: (1) Synaesthetic metaphors are neurally and phenomenologically embodied. (2) They are primary metaphors. (3) The synaesthetic metaphors available in daily life are mostly the mappings from source domain to target domain. (4) Their processes of meaning construction are dynamic processes of conceptual blending. As a result, the relationship between language and thought is revealed. This thesis particularly explains synaesthetic metaphors in Keats's Odes, especially using Conceptual Blending Theory. The synaesthetic metaphors in Keats's odes have their own rhetoric effect and psychological-perceptional bases. The twentieth century study of Keats's poems has been focusing on the theme and contents. This thesis tries to concentrate itself on the cognitive mechanism of synaesthetic metaphors in Keats's odes with the original intention of revealing the artistic charm of Keats's odes and offering some inspiration and guide to modern poetry creation and appreciation. Based on these metaphor theories, more rules to appreciate poetic works have been provided.This paper consists of five chapters. Chapter One is a brief introduction. It sketches out the approach, purpose and significance that this thesis intends to analyze. Chapter Two presents a literary review of synaesthesia, mainly from the rhetorical perspective, cognitive perspective and scientific perspective. Chapter Three and Chapter Four are the main part of this thesis. In Chapter Three, cognitive approaches have been applied to the study of synaesthetic metaphors, which are Embodied Philosophy, Primary Metaphor Theory, Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Conceptual Blending Theory. Chapter Four applies the major metaphor theories into synaesthetic metaphors in Keats's odes, mainly explicating their meaning construction based on the conceptual blending networks.