A Cognitive Poetics Contrast Between The Poem Text And The Novel Text

Literary works are the crystallization of language art, among which both poem and novel are the most two important text types. The relation between them has attracted much attention for quite a long time. As for the text itself, language in literary works should be the basis of research. From a new perspective of Cognitive Poetics, this study applies a new research method to make a comprehensive contrast between the poem text and the novel text. It mainly includes four parts. Parti summarizes the traditional stylistics way and its insufficiency in poem and novel contrast researches, as well as the applicability of Cognitive Poetics theory on this subject. Part2focus on the multidimensional analysis and is mainly based on the following cognitive linguistics theories, such as the Mental Space and Conceptual Blending theory, the Conceptual Metaphor theory, and the ICM theory etc. Four leading conclusions on the issue of text construction can be drawn from this part:φ Dynamic mental space nets are built in poem texts, which are affected by the interaction of three factors----audio, visual and content,(?) Under the guidance of the core metaphor, the typical image can emerge from the poem text while in the novel text there is no such core metaphor; on the contrary, the source domain and the target domain are so diverse that metaphors in novel texts are actually served for different events or scenes.3Segmental words are often used in order to reach coherence with poem’s inherent rhythm, thus a poem’s cognitive gestalt depends on one’s mental continuity.^Instead of building ICMs, novelists usually intend to build deviated cognitive models in order to break readers’expectations and create lively characters. Part3makes a contrast between the two text types in a more macro way---consistency and coherence. Two primary conclusions can be drawn from this part and they are:σLack of apparent coherent means, poem texts apply cognitive gestalts to track the emotion fluctuation.6In the possible world of novel text, many possible scenarios will be created, within which space relations will be schematized, and in this way, the focus of the text is transferred or replaced, as well as accelerate the speed of the plot. Part4summarizes the whole study, and also points out several places that await future researches.