Abstract

Metaphor is the soul of a poem. As a unique way of expression, metaphor plays an important role in conveying the emotions vividly and reflecting the linguistic features of a poem. The use of metaphor enables a poem to be more compact, more enriched and terser. Metaphor doesn’t confine to the lexical and semantic layer of a word. It also occurs in grammatical structures. Different from the previous studies on the poems of John Keats, a prominent poet in Romanticism, this thesis analyzes the odes of John Keats from the perspective of grammatical metaphor. Ode on a Grecian Urn, To Autumn and Ode to a Nightingale are selected and analyzed respectively in terms of ideational metaphor, interpersonal metaphor and textual metaphor. Grammatical metaphor provides a new way of appreciating poems. The conversion of metaphorical forms of lines into their congruent ones benefits students a lot in their own process of writing and appreciating the odes. Meanwhile, it also gives the teachers some enlightenment on the teaching of English poems.

    Key words: grammatical metaphor; Ideational Metaphor; Interpersonal Metaphor; Textual Metaphor; John Keats

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1 Introduction 1

2 Literature review. 2

2.1 Definition of key terms .2

2.2 Previous researches on John Keats and his odes3

3 Ideational metaphor in John Keats’ odes.5 

4 Interpersonal metaphor in John Keats’ odes7

5 Textual metaphor in John Keats’ odes.9

6 Conclusion.11

References13