Use of the Theory of Conceptual Metaphor in Two Sonnets by Victorian Female Poets

Abstract

This paper has applied the theoretical framework of conceptual metaphor theory to the analysis of the source and target domains of metaphors that are used in two English nineteenth century sonnets, both written by contemporaneous female poets. The quantitative and qualitative results of the textual analysis have clearly revealed that Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet 23 centres around the conceptual mapping of the journey of love and life with that of possession. In contrast, Christina Rossetti’s sonnet Remember tackles the central conceptual mapping of death as a journey in relation to its further experiential connections. In addition, the application of conceptual metaphor theoryLakoff and Johnson, 1980) in identifying the frequencies and densities of metaphors’ conceptual domains has resulted in unravelling the thematic structures of both poems. Discovering such a textually attested relationship between the densities of metaphorical conceptual domains and textual thematic structure has neither been fully explored nor identified before in the genre of English female sonnets.