Research On Interpreting Mechanisms Of Poetic Metaphor From The Perspective Of Cognitive Poetics

As an essential element of poetry, metaphor is omnipresent, crossing the time and the space. It is not only a rhetorical phenomenon for purpose of decoration, but rather a basic mode of thinking. Since poetry have the features of complicated images, illusory impressions and endless aftertastes, metaphor in poetry has its own characteristics. Lakoff and Turner (1989) have proposed the term "poetic metaphor" and brought the research of poetic metaphor into the framework of basic metaphor.There are mainly two theories to interpret metaphor:Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT), both of which have their own merits and demerits in the process of metaphor interpretation. There is a trend to apply cognitive linguistic theory to analyze literary texts, especially cognitive poetics represented by Freeman, who applied cognitive theories to the interpretation of poetry. Since the process of literary analysis is reversible, linguistic theory can also be optimized in the process of literary analysis within the framework of cognitive poetics. The optimized linguistic theory will be more efficient in literary analysis and thus a virtuous circle occurs.Emily Dickinson dies leaving us with about two thousand poems. In the past century, her poetry first meets ignorance and misunderstanding and then attention and praise. Just as she says in her poetry:"when death occurs, vitality begun". She, as well as her poetry, attracts more and more attention.Under the guidelines of cognitive poetics, taking Emily Dikinson’s poems as the data, based on the framework of CMT and CBT, this thesis aims to make a systematical comparison between Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Conceptual Blending Theory, and research on the relationship between the two theories in the process of interpreting poetic metaphors. After the analysis, the thesis concludes that CMT and CBT are complementary rather than competing when interpreting poetic metaphors; the two theories can be unified and a comprehensive cognitive framework can be formed in order to benefit the interpretation of poetic metaphors.