The Romantic Roots of Cognitive Poetics: A Comparative Study of Poetic Metaphor in Herder, Novalis, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley
My dissertation, which I am currently turning into a book, closes a gap between cognitive poetics and literary metaphor studies based on Romantic European literature. I argue that cognitive poetics, especially as practiced in the United States today, can gain valuable insights from historical poetic texts of German and English literature. The works of Herder, Novalis, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley offer a rich potential of theoretical underpinnings for the contemporary study of cognitive poetics and cognitive metaphor theory.
Cognitive studies and literary studies can mutually inform each other. On the one hand, the historical and context-oriented perspective of literary studies can help to further develop cognitive metaphor theory; on the other hand, the traditional style analysis of literary studies has largely ignored the cognitive potential of poetic metaphor, reducing it to issues of ornamentation. In order to show that metaphor is much more vital than a stylistic secondary feature, I conduct a comparative analysis of the selected authors’ metaphorically rich poetry and of their theoretical reflections on the cognitive potential of metaphor, thus tracing the Romantic roots of cognitive poetics.
Cognitive studies and literary studies can mutually inform each other. On the one hand, the historical and context-oriented perspective of literary studies can help to further develop cognitive metaphor theory; on the other hand, the traditional style analysis of literary studies has largely ignored the cognitive potential of poetic metaphor, reducing it to issues of ornamentation. In order to show that metaphor is much more vital than a stylistic secondary feature, I conduct a comparative analysis of the selected authors’ metaphorically rich poetry and of their theoretical reflections on the cognitive potential of metaphor, thus tracing the Romantic roots of cognitive poetics.