Language, Cognition, and Emotion in Keats’s Poetry applies an innovative cognitive linguistic approach to the poetry of John Keats, the first of its kind to employ a cognitive-based framework to explore the expression and articulation of emotion in his work.
Brannon adopts an embodied perspective to emotion, rooted in cognitive linguistics, cognitive grammar, and cognitive poetics but also works from figurative language and stylistics, in examining a selection of Keats’s poems. This approach allows for a close interrogation of the texts themselves but also the languages that compose them, comprising lexical and grammatical elements, which, when taken together, bring out the emotional saliency of Keatsian poetry. While revealing fresh insights into the work of John Keats, the book also sheds further light on the importance of cognitive approaches to poetic and grammatical analyses and how both language and the body can serve as forms of communication through which metaphors can be expressed and contextualized.
This volume will appeal to students and scholars interested in cognitive linguistics, figurative language, emotion studies, cognitive science, and Anglophone poetry.
Foreword by Manuel Jobert
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. Cognitive Approaches to Poetry
3. Aspect and Conceptual Metaphor: Poetic Expression and Emotion
4. Emotional Force Dynamics: Causes are Forces and Modality
5. Grammar and Emotion: The Metaphorical Role of Prepositions
6. Emotional Time and Embodiment
7. Conceptual Metonymy and the Physiological Expression of Emotion
8. Conclusion
Biography
Katrina Brannon is Associate Professor of English Linguistics at the Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France in Valenciennes, France. Her research interests include cognitive grammar, embodied emotion, sensorial expression, cognitive poetics and stylistics, conceptual metaphor theory, esthetics, and translation.
This is a beautifully complex book on John Keats’s emotionality. Katrina Brannon’s cognitive linguistic analyses reveal the many fine shades of feeling, emotion, sensitivity, mood, and desire in Keats’ oeuvre. She explains how and why language, cognition, emotion, and body are all indispensably intertwined in the poetry of one of the greatest romantic poets.
Zoltán Kövecses, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
Katrina Brannon has carried out a considerable amount of research, both on linguistics and on poetry and poetics. Her approach is definitely innovative, and the whole book shows a wide-angled knowledge of cognitive theories which enables her to bring out quite vividly the linguistic, communicative and aesthetic aspects of Keats's poetry. This long-awaited book should become a landmark in poetry and cognition studies.
Nathalie Vincent-Arnaud, Professor of English Stylistics and Translation Studies, Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès
Katrina Brannon’s book presents a very clear linguistic analysis of Keats’s poems, which draws on cognitive grammar and poetics, figurative language, cognitive science, philosophy, and poetry. It focuses on the expression of emotions and emotional experience in his work. It views language and the body as forms of communication through which metaphor may be expressed and conceptualized.
It is an innovative book as it is currently the only monograph that takes a cognitive approach to Keats’s poetry and a welcome addition to the field of poetics and linguistics.
It is a must-read for any scholar interested in Keats, poetics, conceptual metaphor or cognitive grammar.
Wilfrid Rotgé, Professor of Linguistics, Sorbonne Université
