A Cognitive Research On Metaphor In Emily Dickinson’s Poetry

From the perspective of traditional rhetoric, metaphor is one of the mostfrequently useful rhetorical techniques in poetry. Metaphor, which is commonly seenin poetry, is the life span of poetry. Frequently-used metaphors in poems arebeneficial for poets to express skillfully their thoughts and avoid ordinary andvapidity in their poems. However, metaphors also add complexity in the verse andincrease the difficulty in understanding. As a result, decoding metaphors in poems isof vital importance to unveil the connotation behind the verse.Based on Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner’s Conceptual Blending, this thesiscompares with Lakoff’s Conceptual Metaphor and chooses some poems of EmilyDickinson as research objects. This thesis attempts to do cognitive research on EmilyDickinson’s poems from four aspects of Conceptual Blending, namely, mental spaces,indirect and multidirectional projections, emergent structure and on-line process, anddiscusses the most effective cognitive theory to decipher the novel and complicatedmetaphors in poems.The research finds that Conceptual Blending is more effective than ConceptualMetaphor in helping us understanding the connotation of poems, so that it can bewidely used in the research of poetic metaphors. Conceptual Blending can help us tounderstand the connotation of poems and can be widely used in the research of poeticmetaphors. The advantages of Conceptual Blending are as follows: firstly, this theory holdsthat people use languages to integrate mental spaces in human beings’ thinking andexpressing progress on the basis of background framework and cultural environment.Hence mental spaces are conductive to construct the unknown vehicle inunderstanding metaphors in poems. Secondly, indirect and multidirectional projections are different from unidirectional and constant mappings of ConceptualMetaphor which is just mappings from source domain to target domain. Such flexibleprojection provides powerful explanation for novel metaphors and various styles oflanguage expression. Thirdly, emergent structure is based on its own logic structure tojuxtapose elements of two domains, highlight and eliminate the difference betweenthem and then express new meanings which are totally similar to neither originaldomain. Emergent structure contributes to understanding obstacle poetic metaphors.Finally, On-line process considers that integration is dynamic which is grounded invarious contexts. Thus it offers more semantic possibilities for the blending betweenanalogous domains. In addition, By analyzing metaphors in Emily Dickinson’s poems,it is not hard for us to find that poetic metaphors represent the connotation of poemsand the philosophical thought of poets. The poems illustrated in this thesis expresspoet’s unique apperception towards truth, life and love.