A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of English Romantic Poetry

Multimodality is the study of interrelationship and interdependence between different communicative modes. It is also a way to transcribe the meaning of discourses composed of different semiotic modes. It has become one of the focuses of academic research of discourse analysis. In 2009, domestic scholar Zhang Delu put forward the synthetic framework of multimodal discourse analysis on the basis of Systemic Functional Linguistic, which has become the theoretical foundation of the multimodal discourse analysis of the verbal discourse in China. Based on Zhang‘s synthetic framework and the features of English poetry, Wang Gaidi and Yang Lixue further put forward a synthetic theoretical framework for multimodal discourse analysis of English poetry. Then more attention is paid to the multimodal discourse analysis of poetry.The study of English romantic poetry has a long history, and the main research paradigms are historical, intrinsic, deconstructive and new-historical paradigms. The studies of English romantic poetry from the perspective of multimodal discourse analysis, however, are relatively insufficient. This study conducts a multimodal discourse analysis of the representative works of major romantic poets including William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Keats, from the levels of culture, meaning and modality, aiming to further verify that the comprehensive framework of multimodal discourse analysis is feasible and effective to the analysis of poetry and helping readers to achieve a better understanding of English romantic Poetry.Firstly, English romantic poetry is the representation of the poet‘s pre-knowledge the genre forms of blank verse, literary ballads, sonnet, ode and Spenserian Stanza. Secondly, the experiential meaning of English romantic poetry is mainly conveyed through the six processes of transitivity. The interpersonal meaning of English romantic poetry is conveyed by mood, polarity, modality and modulation, showing author‘s attitude, motivation, judgment, evaluation, etc. The textual meaning of English romantic poetry is mainly realized by the marked theme and rheme as well as cohesive devices. Lastly, the modality grammar, modality realization and modality interrelation are studied in modality level. The non-verbal modalities, similar to language grammar, have their own grammars, and each mode can help the verbal mode to express the meaning of English romantic poetry. The relationship among the different modes is complementary coordination. The coordination of different modalities helps English romantic poetry form an organic entity.