The Journey Metaphor in the Lyrical Ballads


Kantar D.

İzmir Demokrasi Üniversitesi Beşeri Bilimler Kongresi, 7 - 09 December 2020

  • Publication Type: Conference Paper / Unpublished
  • Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

This paper analyzes the cognitive linguistic and archetypal aspects of the metaphors of the romantic journeys in terms of the theories of Carl Jung and Gorge Lakoff and Mark Johnson. The process through which the romantic journey taken through sometimes hostile, at other times friendly elements of the nature becomes a tenor of transition from subjective experience to collective myth is an interesting topic to be explored. As Jung puts forward in “The Psychology of the Child Archetype”: “An archetypal content expresses itself, first and foremost, in metaphors.” Within this framework we shall discuss the different types of journeys and their ramifications in Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads.

For the romantic poet sublime imagination becomes a third space where mind meets reality and explores it beyond the restrictive limitations of reason. If we take metaphor as a form of projecting knowledge of the world through a new vehicle or figure, then we can claim that metaphor becomes a collective anchor for sublime, archetypal experience.

The actual journeys Coleridge and Wordsworth took through the English countryside produced journeys of fantastic human experience in their work: Sometimes sad, perilous and  sinister as in the journey of the ancient mariner, or  tragic yet filled with a hope of ultimate redemption as in the solitary journey of the idiot boy. Are we going to take part in this romantic mythification through projective refraction of the journey metaphor or are we going to demystify its sublime nature by laying bare the old skeletal linguistic structures that empower it? Both I guess.

This paper analyzes the cognitive linguistic and archetypal aspects of the metaphors of the romantic journeys in terms of the theories of Carl Jung and Gorge Lakoff and Mark Johnson. The process through which the romantic journey taken through sometimes hostile, at other times friendly elements of the nature becomes a tenor of transition from subjective experience to collective myth is an interesting topic to be explored. As Jung puts forward in “The Psychology of the Child Archetype”: “An archetypal content expresses itself, first and foremost, in metaphors.” Within this framework we shall discuss the different types of journeys and their ramifications in Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads.

For the romantic poet sublime imagination becomes a third space where mind meets reality and explores it beyond the restrictive limitations of reason. If we take metaphor as a form of projecting knowledge of the world through a new vehicle or figure, then we can claim that metaphor becomes a collective anchor for sublime, archetypal experience.

The actual journeys Coleridge and Wordsworth took through the English countryside produced journeys of fantastic human experience in their work: Sometimes sad, perilous and  sinister as in the journey of the ancient mariner, or  tragic yet filled with a hope of ultimate redemption as in the solitary journey of the idiot boy. Are we going to take part in this romantic mythification through projective refraction of the journey metaphor or are we going to demystify its sublime nature by laying bare the old skeletal linguistic structures that empower it? Both I guess.