The Cognitive Study On The Metaphors In Emily Dickinson's Poems

Metaphors are ubiquitous in language; however, they are characteristic of poetry. The relationship between poetry and metaphor is closely related. Poetry is the ocean of metaphor while metaphor is an essential component of poetry and it is a basic building block that makes poetry. Poets frequently use metaphor to convey their thoughts to avoid the plainness and dullness of their poems. Poets use metaphor to make an image of their emotions and thoughts, that is, to make abstract concepts more concrete, and allow readers to figure out what meaning the poet is intending to convey and go beyond the surface meaning of the text and further into the internal structure of the poem to grasp its interior meaning.The word"metaphor", originating from Greek, means"proceeding from the one to the other."Its literal sense is transferring one object to another object. Metaphor was traditionally considered as a figure of speech, until 1980s, with the masterpiece Metaphors we live by by Lakoff and Johnson, which marked the beginning of cognitive turn for metaphor studies. Metaphor is not seen as a rhetorical means any more, but as a way of human thinking.In recent years, cognitive linguistic theory has been applied to analyze literary texts frequently, especially cognitive poetics represented by Freeman who applied new cognitive strategy to the interpretation of poetry. The thesis attempts to explore metaphors presented in Emily Dickinson's poems from cognitive linguistic theory. Emily Dickinson prevails as a powerful voice and literary figure in the American literary world. Since 1890, when her poems were first published, critical response to her works has been a great sensation. Scholars and critics attempt to analyze and decipher her poems from different perspectives.Three of Emily Dickinson's famous poems are selected in this thesis in order to have a cognitive analysis. First, metaphors in the poems of Emily Dickinson are analyzed by conceptual metaphor theory put forward by Lakoff and Johnson. Then, the thesis employs the framework of conceptual integration theory proposed by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner to interpret the death metaphors in Emily Dickinson's poems. The thesis illustrates the significance of metaphors in Emily Dickinson's poems and how metaphors in her poetry can be better understood and appreciated.