| Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), a literary talent of the nineteenth century,represents a new area in novels and poems in American literature. Many researchershave more interests in his novels than his poems. So, there leaves a gap in the study ofhis poems, and especially remains under-explored inner world as reflected in hispoems. This thesis analyzes Poe’s poetry of three different periods from theperspective of cognitive poetics to explore his inner world.Cognitive poetics combines the literary study with linguistics, psychology andcognitive science, and holds that the literary works root in the most basic and generalcognitive activities and life experiences. Therefore, the reading and analyzing of theliterary works can take the general linguistic cognition and cognitive mechanism forreference. In other words, employing the related theories of cognitive poetics toanalyze the poetry can better find out the poet’s inner world hidden in his poems.There are four chapters in this thesis. The first chapter is about Poe’s life and hisliterary influence as well as a literature review of studies on his poetry, and thenproposes the purpose and methodology of this thesis. The second chapter is aboutcognitive poetics as a literary approach. The third chapter tries to integrate the relatedtheories of cognitive poetics into the image schema theory in order to decode thepoet’s inner world in the poetry. The fourth chapter investigates the relevancy betweenmental spaces and the poet’s inner world, and that between fantasy worlds and thepoet’s inner world.Poe’s poetry of three different periods writes an image schema of his inner worldwhose trajector (affection) is in the state of conceiving and being conceived. Thisdynamical process witnesses the perfect development of the trajector on the road builtby different poems: from the basic affection cultivated in early periods, to theillusionary love with Helen in the poetry of manhood, and to the mad miss to Helen in the poetry of his later life. Mental spaces and fantasy worlds in the poetry can reflectPoe’s real inner world.In a word, Helen lives in the poet’s heart and accompanies him to spend his shortand torturous life, though she is a passer-by. |
