IMAGERY OF SUPPRESSED EMOTIONS IN MODERN ENGLISH POETIC TEXTS: A COGNITIVE MODELLING STUDY

Abstract

The article focuses on reconstruction of emotive models in poetic texts with regard to their imagery organization. The purpose of the research is to reveal recurring models of suppressed emotions construing in English poetic texts. It is generally accepted that emotiveness of a poem has a diffuse character, and thus it evades direct observations. Therefore, the access to its study becomes possible only through its modelling via the application of cognitive and affective poetics methods, as well as those of semiotics and pragmatics.

Results and conclusions. Modelling of emotiveness in poetic texts, dedicated to the expression of suppressed emotions, has resulted in revealing within them four basic models: repressive, transitive, dissipative and the model of “inactive pendulum”. It has been stated that the emotive model of a poetic text is a reconstructed pattern of encoded emotional structures arrangement. It marks the progress of the experienced emotion (in a particular life situation) or the emotion that is being experienced by the author in the process of writing. The components that make up the pattern are as such: the emotive threshold (the part of the text where a new emotional structure emerges – the emotive image), the emotive peak (the point of the utmost intensity within the emotional image marked by stylistic means), emotive turn (the textual shift from one image of emotion to another or an opposite one) and emotive focus (the accumulation of emotionally colored means in some parts of a poetic text with an aim of foregrounding the meaningful feeling or its shade(s) for the author). Thus, it has been concluded that the author’s emotions get fixed in poetic text in compliance with the mentioned models, rather than chaotically. The repressive model evidently demonstrates the cutting off peaks of negative emotions experienced by the lyrical subject, with an aim of suppressing their painful impact. The «inactive pendulum» model reveals the absence of an emotive turn. The transitive model is marked by the shift of emotive means from more to less intensive in terms of their semantics. The dissipative model demonstrates the author’s avoidance of any specific emotive focus.