ABSTRACT:The study of metaphor has undergone a long history. According to the traditional rhetoric, metaphor is treated as a kind of rhetoric or ornamental device. However, cognitive linguistics has been developed in the recent two decades. It is regarded as an important mean of thinking and a common cognitive phenomenon which is essential and basic in language and thought. In essence, metaphor is a cognitive tool which helps human beings understand the world around by themselves.
According to cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor is formulating and comprehending one thing (concept) in terms of another (object). Conceptual metaphors exist in human thought and action. The working mechanism of conceptual metaphor is the mapping from the source domain to target domain. Romantic love is commonly regarded as a kind of special emotion which is abstract and hard to tell. So, love would be difficult to specify without metaphor. John Keats was an English Romantic poet. His poetry is always rich in imagery. He painted poetic pictures full of wonderful color. With vivid and rich images, he had a significant influence on a diverse range of later poets and writers.
This thesis is a study of love metaphors from cognitive perspective in John Keats’ poems. The love metaphors from thirty John Keats’ poems had been investigated systematically to reveal the conceptual systems of love. They are divided into four kinds which are human, deity, plant, human body. The working mechanism of metaphor (mapping) and the functions of metaphor in John Keats’ poems are analyzed by classification analysis. In John Keats’ poems, most of the love metaphors came from his life experience, for example, when his love faded he used fading flowers to express his sadness, which means different life experiences can lead different styles of love metaphors. Metaphor, as a cognitive device, has an experiential basis. In other words, John Keats was grown in western culture, so his love metaphor was affected by the Bible or Greek. Thus, different cultures will have different metaphors for the same concept.
Key words: Love Metaphor Cognitive Linguistics Mapping Poetry
摘要:隐喻的研究源远流长。传统修辞学历来把隐喻当做一种修辞手段。在最近二十几年崛起的认知语言学研究中，隐喻不再被看做是一种修辞手段，也不再被看做是一种简单的语言产物，而被看做是人类的一种认知现象，是人类借助语言而表现出来的思维方式和行为方式。就其本质来说隐喻是认知的，是人类认识和理解客观世界的一种重要的认知手段。
认知语言学认为概念隐喻是通过一个事物（概念）来理解和体验另一个事物（概念）。概念隐喻是根植于人的思维和行为中的东西。概念隐喻是始原域到目标域的映射，具有系统性，不对成型等特征。爱情是人类的一种特殊情感，爱情很抽象。没有隐喻人类将无法准确美妙地表达爱情。济慈是英国著名浪漫主义诗人，他的诗歌充满想象，用语言描绘得五颜六色，对后世的诗歌界影响甚大。
本文拟从认知角度，对30首济慈诗歌中的爱情隐喻进行系统的研究分析以揭示爱情概念背后的认知系统。研究发现济慈爱情诗歌中的爱情隐喻受到诗人的生活经验，宗教信仰以及神话传说等方面的影响，导致了他诗歌中爱情隐喻构成的独特性。本文证明了隐喻通过具体事物的描述来映射抽象概念，如运用植物来映射爱情。并且，根据文章对爱情的抽象概念做出的更清晰的论述，对济慈爱情诗歌中爱情隐喻的诗句作出的充分的分析，证明了济慈诗歌当中爱情隐喻反映了他所处时代人们认识和解释世界的方式，也证明了隐喻是一种以经验为基础的认知方式。再次，在济慈的诗歌中，很多爱情隐喻来自他的生活经历，如他会运用花儿的凋谢来抒发他爱情逝去的悲伤，意味着不同的人有不同的生活经历。
关键词：爱情隐喻 认知语言学 映射 诗歌
