A Study Of The Prototypes In Goblin Market

In this thesis, the present researcher attempts to analyze Christina Rossetti' famous poem Goblin Market in the theoretical framework of literary criticism and cognitive linguistic approach. The critical studies in literature often fail to assess how authors linguistically develop and reinforce a sense of character or a kind of thing in their work. Yet, by examining how characters and their actions are cognitively encoded, an analysis of linguistic pattern leads to a fuller understanding of a literary text.Prototype is the common concern of both literary critics and linguists. Literary critics usually discuss on the origin, development trace and connotation of the prototype, so the prototype in literature analysis often gives many interpretations to this phenomenon.The main purpose is to make clear that the concept of prototype has different connotations and power of interpretations in the field of literary criticism and linguistics. So, I would like to use the prototype theory in the Goblin Market in the hope of gaining some new light on the poem and at the same time, trying to find the shortcomings of the prototype theory in analyzing poems.It is argued in the thesis that the meaning of linguistic categories (with respect to prototype structures) is not always defined by a set of distinct features, but is often blurred at the edges. However, it is wrong to assume that the prototype theory leads to prototypical category structures or even equates fuzzy boundary words with fuzzy meaning. Examined from this new perspective, the poem yields a new interpretation.