On The Iconicity In John Keats’ Poetry

Generally speaking, it is of great significance to do linguistic analysis of literary works, particularly poems, for it provides implications on the teaching, understanding, and appreciation of literary works. In recent decades, with the rapid development of cognitive linguistics and cognitive stylistics, theories in cognitive linguistics, such as conceptual metaphor, principle of iconicity, etc. have been applied into the study of literary works. However, it is no contradiction to say that it has not became the mainstream in studying literary works;on the contrary, most of the previous studies are carried out from literary perspective, other than with a linguistic theory as its theoretical underpinning.It is acknowledged that the classic image created by Keats’ poems is one of the positive factors that contribute to his celebrity, but this can hardly be accomplished without his skilled linguistic expressions. Unfortunately, a great amount of current studies on Keats concentrate on analyzing the image created by the poems, which leads to the ignorance of his master linguistic skills. It is undoubtedly that poem is the site where iconicity is most apparently embodied, with Keats as no exception. Therefore, this study delves into the investigation of John Keats’poems drawing the principle of iconicity as its theoretical departure. It applies the theory of iconicity into analyzing Keats’poetry from the following three subcategories, i.e.phonological, morphological and syntactic iconicity; and it further attempts to conduct a comparative study of the iconicity encoded into the English and its Chinese-translated counterpart of John Keats’poetry to explore the correlations between form and meaning as well as the difference of iconicity in these two versions. This study will provide some implications for the understanding and appreciation for Keats’ poems;and it will also contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between linguistic forms and meanings.The thesis is made up of seven chapters. Chapter One gives a general introduction of this thesis, including the motivation and significance, correlations between iconicity and poetry, which is followed by the structure of this thesis. Chapter Two presents an overview of studies on John Keats’ poetry and iconicity. More importantly, this chapter also provides the theoretical foundation upon which this thesis is based. This thesis carries out a detailed study of phonological, morphological and syntactic iconicity in poems from Chapter Three to Five. In these three chapters, the author uses sufficient examples, aiming to reveal how the literature mirrors the real world through the analysis. Chapter Three focuses on the analysis and explanation of phonological iconicity which is further subcategorized as direct and indirect phonological iconicity, followed by Chapter Four which analyzes and expounds the application of morphological iconicity in Keats’ poems. Chapter Five purports to illustrate and illuminate the phenomenon of syntactic iconicity from the principles of adjacency, cohesion and sequential order. In Chapter Six, the author conducts a comparative study between English and Chinese versions between John Keats’ poetry, and finds that the syntactic iconicity in Keats’poetry can be transferred into Tu’s translation, while his translation causes the translation losses of phonological iconicity and morphological iconicity. The last chapter is the conclusion which sums up the main content of this thesis, indicating the major findings and implications of the study and gives suggestions for future studies.To sum up, this thesis makes a thorough and systemic study of John Keats’ poetry from the perspective of iconicity. It is supposed to be of theoretical as well as practical significance.On one hand, it will enrich cognitive linguistics and the development of cognitive stylistics; on the other hand, it also has pedagogic significance in that it will make a great contribution to poetry translation, teaching and appreciation.