Study On Subject Images In T.S. Eliot’s Poetry From The Angle Of Conceptual Metaphor Theory

T.S.Eliot is an outstanding modernist poet and the representative ofpost-symbolism. There exits numerous metaphors in Eliot’s poetry，which containsvaroious fresh and unique images. These images are reflctions of his poems’ artisticskills and poetic spirit. Destruction, death and revival are the three significant subjectimages in Eliot’s poetry. And only through the deeper meaning of these metaphorsthat under the surface of these images can readers grasp the essence of his poetry.Scholars mainly focus on the research on Eliot’s theory of poetics and practice onpoetry, the relationship between the creation of poetry and literary criticism and otheraspects. By contrast, scholars show little interest in studying the metaphors whichunder the surface of various images from the perspective of cognition.Metaphor, as a figure of speech, is frequently used to convey emotion and makethe content rich by poets. It can be traced back to ancient Greeks. However, metaphoris traditionally viewed as an rhetorical device by poets, thus scholars has mademetaphor research from literature and rehtoric for a long time. Recently, because ofthe rise and development of cognitive linguistics, metaphor has achieved a newrecognition, which is regared as an important way of thought and cognitive toolkit.Based on Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory, the images that reflectthe deeper meaning of metaphor are studied in this thesis. After careful analysis ofthese images, in this theis, it finds that these images are integrated with each other todisplay metaphor. At the same time, it explains these metaphors’ working mechanismon the basis of the similarity between the source domain and the target domain. In thisway, the findings in this thesis are that conceptual metaphor is produced on the basisof people’s daily experiences in the world, and that metaphor is not only a languagephenomenon, but also a way of human thought. In addition, the thesis intends toprovide a new perspective to appreciate images in Eliot’s poetry, then the readers willknow the theme of his poetry well.