The Metaphorical Structure in the Literary Text: A Cognitive Approach

Abstract

The theme of metaphor is among the most important themes in rhetoric dealing with similarity; it is one of the subjects that has received a great deal of study by thinkers, rhetoricians, and critics across different eras. The evolution in linguistics following the emergence of cognitive sciences, or the so-called "cognitive revolution," changed the concept of metaphor from a linguistic phenomenon linked to poetic image and rhetorical decoration—and from mere words of decoration and improvement of style—to a cognitive phenomenon and a tool of thinking present in all fields of daily life, forming a major basis of our conceptual systems. This is what we seek to highlight in this scientific paper by embodying the new concept of metaphor in two literary texts: one a poem and the other prose.