Resumen de tesis doctoral: ROBLES SÁEZ, Adela. 2001. The Poetic Image: Relations between Form and Meaning in Spanish Poetry. Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley (EE.UU)
Carlos Subirats Rüggeberg
subirats at ICSI.BERKELEY.EDU
Thu May 15 06:30:52 UTC 2003
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Resumen de tesis doctoral:
1. Autora:
ROBLES SÁEZ, Adela
2. Título de la tesis:
The Poetic Image: Relations between Form and Meaning in Spanish
Poetry
2.1 Número de páginas: 330
2.2 Palabras clave: grammar construction, conceptual integration,
iconicity, cognitive semantics, poetic image,
literary theory, Lorca, Romances.
3. Fecha de defensa:
Mayo de 2001
4. Departamento, centro o laboratorio en el que se ha desarrollado:
Department of Spanish and Portuguese,
Department of Linguistics,
University of California, Berkeley
EE.UU
5. Director:
Prof. Dru Dougherty
6. Proyecto o línea de investigación en el que se incluye:
7. Resumen e índice:
Does literary meaning reside in the text, or is interpretation the
prerogative of the reader? Some literary theories claim that the text
generates meaning, others suggest that they have as many meanings as
readers. I propose a more organic approach to this issue.
Meaning construction, transmission, and retrieval are cognitive
problem-solving operations, in which both the linguistic material and
the reader’s knowledge of the world serve as guidelines to re-create the
conceptual structure that underlies the text, and to draw pertinent
inferences related to the reader’s life. However, because cognitive
mechanisms are equal for all human beings, only inferences produced in
accordance with them are valid. A text guides to several possible
meanings, and the reader chooses those that optimize the processing of
information.
Language resembles thought iconically. The process of association
between form and content or between two concepts is a regulated and
describable process, and those regulations are not arbitrary, but a
direct result of how our perceptual apparatus is designed. Therefore,
the relation between language and thought is naturally motivated.
Naturally motivated form/content units are perpetuated by convention and
can be imposed onto new concepts in order to save processing time.
I apply these concepts to three distant manifestations of Spanish
poetry: medieval romances, Góngora’s baroque poetry, and Lorca’s
surrealist poems. In them we see that the octosyllabic line is one of
the most motivated lines for the expression of poetic meaning. Poetic
lines can also be organized in higher-order units designed to ease the
transmission of information.
The minimal motivated poetic sign capable of transmitting the
motivated expression of an emotion is a poetic image. In it, an emotion
that has been conceptualized maximizing all human cognitive resources is
expressed by a conventionalized but motivated poetic unit that minimizes
the loss of information by guiding the reader closely in her
interpretation.
Poems are composed by combining poetic images. The reader approaches
each poem with predictable expectations derived from convention, and,
using definable cognitive tools, finds associations between the
linguistic and conceptual structure of the text first, and then between
the conceptual structure and its possible interpretations according to
her own experience.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Conceptualizing Reality into Thought
1.1. The Romances as a Field of Study
1.2. Limitations Imposed by Orality
1.3. Naturally Motivated Conceptualizations
1.3.1. Gestalt or Objecthood
1.3.2. Figures against a Background
1.3.3. Event Structure
1.3.4. Prototypes
1.3.5. Frames of Experience
Metaphorical conceptualization
1.4. The Construction and Retrieval of Meaning
1.5. Summary
Chapter 2: Iconicity in Language
2.1. Iconicity
2.2. Iconicity at the Level of the Text
2.3. Iconicity at the Level of the Clause
2.4. Iconicity in Poetry
The Poetic Line
The Assonant Pair
Patterns
The Narrative Unit
Formulas
2.5. The Formulaic Meaning of a Poem
2.6. Conclusions
Chapter 3: The Semantics of Poetry
3.2. Luis de Góngora y Argote
3.3. Structure of Las Soledades
3.4. Góngora’s Obscurity
3.4.1. Anti-iconicity
3.4.2. Complex Conceptual Structures
Grammatical Skeletons: The Poetic Line and the Narrative Unit
3.5. Clarity in Góngora
3.6. Stanzas as Poetic Units
3.7. Metaphors
Theory of Metaphor
Conceptual and Image Metaphors
Metaphor in Góngora
Multiple Metaphors for a Concept
3.8. Blends
Combined images
3.9. Linguistic Clues for Metaphors and Blends
3.10. Conclusion
Chapter 4: Autonomy and Dependency
4.1. Spanish Phonology
4.2. Rhythm
The Meaning of Poetic Rhythm
4.3. Rhythm in the Poetic Line
The Natural Motivation of the Octosyllabic Line
4.4. Intonation in the Poetic Unit
4.5. Metrics
Space in Poetry
4.6. Prominent Locations in the Stanza
4.7. Language Prominent Positions and Poetic Prominent Positions
4.8. Creating Expectations in the Reader
4.9. Conclusions
Chapter 5: The Poetic Image
5.1. All Language is Formulaic
5.2. The Poetic Sign and the Poetic Image
5.3. The Matter of Poetic Images
A Flow of Mental Images
Motivated and Unmotivated Mental Images
Natural Interpretation
5.4. The Elements of a Poetic Image
Naturally Motivated Source Domains
5.5. The Semantic Structure of the Poetic Image
Motivated Event Structures
Source Domains of Metaphorical Event Structures
Autonomy of the Poetic Image
Cumulative Effect
5.6. Formal Definition of Poetic Image
5.7. The Difference between Metaphor and Poetic Image
5.8. Conclusion
Chapter 6: Triggering and Restricting Meaning through Grammar
6.1. New Poetry, Yet Again
6.2. The Real Power of Language
6.2.1.The Nature of Imaginary Entites
6.2.2. Concealing Cognitive Mechanisms
6.3. Federico García Lorca
6.4. The Fabric of the Surrealist Poem
6.4.1. The Paratactic Level
6.4.2. Syntactic Relations
6.5. Linguistic Triggers
6.5.1. Gestalt and Objecthood
6.5.2. Conceptual Blends
6.5.3. Grammatical and Phonological Blends
6.6. Unchallengeable Information
6.7. Restrictions Reflected by Grammar
Optimization
6.8. Conclusions
Chapter 7: Underspecified Information
7.1. Attention
7.2. Predetermined Prominent Positions
7.2.1. Phonological and Metrical Prominent Positions
7.2.2. Grammatical Prominent Positions
Construction Grammar
Metaphor and Constructions
Locations in a Construction
Presupposition Floats
7.3. Conclusions
Conclusions, Implications and Further Research
References
8. Correo-e de la autora:
<arobles at sfsu.edu>
9. Cómo obtener la tesis:
ProQuest Digital Dissertations:
http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations
MÁS INFORMACIÓN
Introduction
© 2001 Adela Robles-Sáez
[Este texto se reproduce en Infoling por deferencia de su autora. Esta
prohibido citar total o parcialmente este texto sin citar a la
propietaria de los derechos de autor ©Adela Robles-Sáez.]
Since the invention of the modern self, which coincides with the
advancement of literacy, poets have tended towards a more lyric
expression of their feelings. Poetry has abandoned gradually part of its
role as the historical recorder of a culture and specialized in the
transmission of emotions for which everyday language is clearly
insufficient. Since the Renaissance, the use of poetic images has
proliferated until they were proclaimed the true essence of poetry at
the beginning of the twentieth century.
Because human emotions are mysterious, indefinable, and fiercely
personal, so are poetic images. They are the last resort where the poet
can talk without having to justify herself, not having to adhere to a
formal technique of construction. We can read poetic images, but not
paraphrase them; we can grasp the emotion they transmit, but not label
it. Often, we refuse to have them explained. And yet, I believe there is
a way to explain how they come to be such an appealing vehicle for
emotions. We need, however, to stop thinking of logic as a dehumanizing
method of dissection because logic is, after all, a human function of
the body. Thoughts, whether rational, emotional or banal, are as tied to
the human body as affection or pain. They are the result of our
interaction with the world and with one another. Our link to the world
is our perceptual apparatus, and that means that perception is not
defined by objective rules outside ourselves. The way we perceive things
is tied to nature in a very specific way: it depends on the height of
our eyes, our ability to touch and manipulate objects, and our desire to
satisfy our most immediate needs. Our body also imposes on our
organization of the world, and determines the way in which we express
our needs. Our emotions are tied to our surroundings, and so are the
mechanisms that we have developed to express them.
It is because of the humanness of the mechanisms used in their
conception that poetic images move us emotionally. The goal of this
dissertation is to show how poetic images are naturally motivated, and
to investigate the direct relation between the way we feel them, the way
we think of them and the way we express them through language.
It is not going to be an easy task even if we reduce the field of
exploration to three manifestations of Spanish poetry representative of
their times: old romances, Góngora and Lorca. There are many ways to
approach the issue of emotion and poetry that will have to be
articulated: from the point of view of the author and the formation of
the image, to its encoding in language, and its reception by the reader.
Each of those fields is big enough to justify many years of research.
For this study, I only attempt to show that there is a set of
interpretative mechanisms and a set of human experiences that are common
to all human beings, and that those are the ones we use to write and
interpret poetry.
To demonstrate that poetic images are naturally motivated, I count
on the growing amount of excellent research done by all the disciplines
that integrate cognitive science. From neuroscience and
psycholinguistics we know that perception is an organic phenomenon based
on brain activities like sequencing or scanning. Certain functions like
attention and memory are linked to biological factors that have a direct
effect on the length and shape of linguistic constructions. From
psychology we know how we interpret outside world stimuli, how we
categorize and organize them as objects, and how universal those
mechanisms are. From linguistics we know that the form of language is
iconic to its meaning, and the important role that language plays in the
process of thinking. And from literary studies, we have learned that
while literature is the creation of a fictional world, our perception of
experience is inevitably literary, and that only through conceptual
metaphors can we find our position in the world. All these fields of
research working together present an ever more clear picture of how
meaning is constructed, transmitted and understood. Based on their
findings, I would like to explain that there is a naturally motivated
way in which emotions can be expressed and interpreted in the context of
poetry.
The first two chapters summarize how we perceive the world and
transform perception into thoughts and thoughts into language, and apply
these theories to Spanish medieval romances. Some of the most important
tools used are gestalt, figure/ground alignment, event structure,
experiential frames, and mental spaces. The result of the transformation
of perception into thought is a concept whose shape and structure is
determined by the natural neurological and psychological mechanisms that
govern perception and its organization. Then we shall see how this
conceptual structure is encoded by language in a manner that is as
iconic as possible. In other words, how we manipulate those cognitive
tools again so that linguistic discourse, which is linear by nature,
replicates the hierarchical organization of a conceptual structure.
Because we are dealing with oral poetry in an oral culture, any
linguistic expression must work around the limitations imposed by our
short-term memory. Our mind finds a clever solution. It creates
structures of the maximum allowable length that can be perceived as
individual and autonomous objects. It guides our attention by giving a
greater amount of detail to the most important concepts and placing them
in the most prominent positions, and it arranges all these objects into
familiar patterns of interaction. All these perceptual mechanisms don’t
simply accumulate data but rather multiply their effect and create an
organic whole predestined to be understood in a specific way. This is
essentially a poetic line: a line that assures that most of the
information it contains can be understood by default. In romances, we
only need to hear the two words located in the prominent positions of
the octosyllabic line in order to deduce a good deal of information. Not
surprisingly, this line is found in most oral accounts in Spanish.
Poetry is possible because language can combine poetic lines into
larger higher-order units in ways that don’t jeopardize communication
even though they exceed the limits of the short-term memory. In Spanish
oral poetry the most common complex unit is the assonant pair, which is
composed of two poetic lines that complement or “complete” each
other—the first one raises an expectation and the second one fulfills
it. Assonant pairs can in turn be combined to form narrative units. Once
again, perceptual mechanisms aren’t added together, but rather multiply
when used in combination. Therefore understanding a four-line unit
requires less processing effort than understanding four separate lines.
I have called this unit a narrative unit because it helps advance
narration in romances. I would venture to say that this is the most
natural and spontaneous segmentation of information in Spanish oral
texts. It reinforces the unit’s connection to a larger text by repeating
previous information and adding new material. The new material is
located in prominent positions at the end of the unit because that is
the most memorable location and the one that requires less processing.
These units usually contain a well-known formal formula, and a
well-known conceptual formula —a motive—, which further eases their
understanding. Oral texts are combinations of more or less conventional
narrative units.
When one of those narrative units is repeated frequently enough it
becomes a formula. Because they are so well known, formulas evoke an
abstract meaning even before they are realized in a poem. They usually
specify the location of the new event in the whole of the text, and they
provide an evaluation —a point of view— of the relevance of this new
event in the development of the story. There is linguistic evidence that
the formulaic phenomenon is not specific to poetry, but that it is
present in all uses of language.
Because the form of poetry depends on its context, it changes with
time. In this respect, Góngora’s Soledades and old romances are as
different as any two poetic manifestations can be. Yet, the poetic line
does not suffer major changes —it still needs to adhere to the
limitations imposed by our memory capacity. The narrative unit,
however, develops into what we know as a stanza. Stanzas are the product
of combining our perception of sound and vision to aid communication in
a poetic context. In other words, they are also naturally motivated for
their circumstances.
In order to understand Góngora we need to discuss metaphors and
blends. These two cognitive tools are an integral part of poetic
reasoning, and of all other kinds of reasoning, and they are present in
all poetry, but the written culture that Góngora represents allows more
fields of reference to be open at the same time, expanding the limits of
metaphorical expression. Conventional metaphors are conceptual formulas.
We organize the world in a series of experiential frames. Some of them
are tightly structured and ubiquitous because they represent very common
and frequent experiences which are primary for all human beings. These
are known as primary scenes. When confronted with a new experience, or
when trying to shape a concept to our advantage, we map the structure of
a primary scene, whose components and results are known to everyone,
onto the new concept via metaphor. In other words, metaphor imposes the
structure of a primary scene onto structureless concepts. A poetic line
that features a metaphorical conception I have called a poetic sign.
Oral poetry is traditional and collective; literacy poems can be
authored by an individual. As culture has become more and more literate,
poetry seems to have specialized in the communication of emotions. The
poetic sign, then, also specializes in the transmission of emotions. In
chapter 5, I argue that some expressions are more directly linked to the
emotion that they communicate than others. When a naturally motivated
expression of a feeling is matched to a naturally motivated poetic sign,
we have a poetic image. A motivated expression of an emotion is one in
which sensory experience is substituted in thought by the most
prototypical member of the category of things that produce that
experience. The problem out of which poetry is born is the lack of words
to express a combination of emotions, or the many nuances of a one
emotion—in fact it is the nature of words to be underspecified labels
for concepts in order to facilitate storage and retrieval of
information. In those cases we find a process or an event that reflects
metaphorically a combination of feelings. We choose the prototypes that
best represent the sensory experience of each emotion, and we give them
an event structure that replicates metaphorically the complex emotion.
Prototypes for each sensation may be very disparate, in which case they
require an intensive process of tailoring so that they can appear as
participants of the same coherent event. This is known as “blending.”
The poetic image is born of the need to combine a poetic blend with
a poetic sign that will communicate it effortlessly. This operation is
more fruitful than simply creating an artificial correspondence between
two unrelated elements in two unrelated systems. Language uses all its
resources —acoustic linearity, visual linearity, rhythm, fragmentation,
and so on—to be iconic of thought, and because of that, the grammar of a
linguistic expression can be read as a path guiding us to its meaning.
Words located in prominent positions, the amount of code used, adherence
or rejection of formulas, and so on, help us decide the nature and
importance of each of the elements that configure the original thought.
In a poetic image everything is meaningful in naturally motivated ways.
Even the fact that we may find it difficult to process the image is
metaphorical of the agonizing process of understanding one’s particular
feelings.
The way in which we use cognition to express and understand
ourselves is as fascinating as the nature of the feelings that we want
to express, precisely because they stem from the same place: the
reaction of the human being to her environment. But another fascinating
fact about cognition is its ability to conceal itself so that we can
focus our attention on our goals. This makes us believe that there is a
direct and transparent relation between an expression and its meaning—an
obvious relation that doesn’t require any explanation. In fact, there is
no direct link between language and objects in the world, and therefore,
no direct relation between language and the meaning it triggers. There
is a more or less directly motivated relation between our perception of
that object in a specific task-oriented situation and the expression
that we use, and this relation may be more or less conventional. There
are also expressions that require more processing operations than
others, or that bring to a foreground a larger part of that processing.
Chapters 6 and 7 expose the ways in which cognition makes meaning
seem obviously related to its linguistic expression. In them we see that
the mechanisms that we use to decipher Lorca’s most incomprehensible
surrealist images are the same that we use in romances, but the role of
convention and expectation is greater in Lorca. After a thousand years
of conventionalizing Spanish poetry and language, the reader counts on
much more “metapoetic” and “metalinguistic” information to decode his
poems. In a way, the rebelliousness of avant-garde art depends very
heavily on traditional, rational, and often cliché images.
Lorca also exposes the processes of cognition and uses this exposure
as a means of poetic expression. Our awareness of cognition is like our
awareness of other bodily functions. When watching television, we are
probably unaware of the workings of our body. When climbing, we are
probably aware of those parts of the body that are task-oriented, like
our hands and feet (but not our metacarpals). Some bodily processes,
like the production of insulin, always remain unconscious. Understanding
means to perform problem-solving activities to process information that
is related to a specific task in the hope that this information will
help us solve that task. Lorca makes us perform cognitive gymnastics to
raise awareness of every single cognitive mechanism and thus to show how
difficult and painful the relationship between the human being and her
world is.
Everything in the poetic text steers us to replicate the conceptual
structure from which it was born. In that sense, there is some meaning
in the text that is not arbitrary and open for discussion. But after the
original conceptualization has been reconstructed, it is our task as
readers to shape our conception of the world accordingly (to “imagine”
what the poet meant). There may be different possibilities of
interpretation depending on how much and what kind of information each
reader has of the world, but all interpretations must conform to the
laws of metaphor. And we must rank the possible interpretations
according to how well they optimize the process of interpretation. In
other words, we are not as free as we think we are to make connections
between the elements of a poem, not even if that was the original
intention of the poet.
Cómo obtener la tesis:
ProQuest Digital Dissertations:
http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations
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