Poetic figurativeness as a foreign culture cognition instrument
- Pages
- 51-60
Abstract
The article analyzes the metaphorical conceptualization of intercultural space in French and Russian lyric poetry of the 20th and 21st centuries. The research goal is to determine the cognitive potential of poetic imagery as a means of exploring the space of another culture. Based on classical (S. A. Askoldov, A. J. Greimas) and contemporary (V. V. Feschenko, M. Freeman) linguistic, philosophic, and semiotic approaches, the cognitive status of poetic imagery is substantiated. The definition of intercultural space is proposed as a conceptual domain and the object of artistic interpretation. The combination of the identification procedure of figurative word usage with the techniques of metaphorical modeling allowed for the identification of conceptual domains-sources of imaginative interpretation of the space of another culture in the texts of twelve French and twelve Russian poets. The prevalence of the conceptual domain of HUMAN / LIVING BEING made it possible to specify the cognitive nature of intercultural space — not as an object of interpretation but as a subject, equivalent to the author’s poetic consciousness. Cognitive equality between sensory and creative experience is established, defining the role of the creative process as a cognitive guide in the course of poetic exploration of the world. The identification of abstractions as conceptual domains-sources of poetic exploration of reality allowed for the complementation of the thesis about the “unidirectional” nature of metaphorical conceptualization and constituted the novelty of this research.