The Role of Metaphor in Poetic Iconicity

LITERARY METAPHOR AFTER THE COGNITIVE REVOLUTION, Monika Fludernik, ed., Forthcoming

36 Pages Posted: 8 May 2009 Last revised: 29 Apr 2015

See all articles by Margaret H. Freeman

Margaret H. Freeman

Myrifield Institute for Cognition and the Arts - MICA

Date Written: May 5, 2009

Abstract

Building on Masako Hiraga's studies of metaphor and icon in poetry, I argue that metaphor is the bridge that connects image to diagram in Peircean terms in order to create iconic emergent structure in the resulting blend. Poetic iconicity is achieved when metaphorical schemas enable a poem to achieve, in Susanne K. Langer's terminology, the semblance of felt life through forms symbolic of human feeling. Poetic iconicity thus also provides a means whereby the evaluation of a successful poem can be explained. In this paper, I compare two sonnets by Percy Bysshe Shelley and Horace Smith on the same theme, and show how and why Shelley's poem achieves poetic iconicity whereas Smith's doesn't.

Keywords: metaphor, blending, poetic iconicity, Ozymandias

Suggested Citation

Freeman, Margaret H., The Role of Metaphor in Poetic Iconicity (May 5, 2009). LITERARY METAPHOR AFTER THE COGNITIVE REVOLUTION, Monika Fludernik, ed., Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1399683

Margaret H. Freeman (Contact Author)

Myrifield Institute for Cognition and the Arts - MICA ( email )

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Heath, MA 01346-0132
United States
413 337 4854 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://https://sites.google.com/a/case.edu/myrifield/

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