Literary Arts (Mar 2018)
Conceptual metaphor: the confluence of thought and eloquence in Naser Khosro's odes
Abstract
Nasser Khosro, as one of the figures of the educational and moral literature and one of the philosophers, has a special position in the history of Persian literature and is one of the most famous poets of Khorasani style. What is prominent in this poet's poem is the abundance of ideological, philosophical and moral issues and a remarkable point in the poet's style is the abundance of ideological, philosophical and ethical issues that are prominently seen.Therefore, in this research, some of Nasser Khosrow's odes are examined based on their relationship with conceptual or cognitive metaphor. Conceptual or cognitive metaphor emphasizes on the link between language and thinking. Metaphor seems to be related to thought rather than be accounted in connection with language. Thus, before being expressed as an expression of language, metaphor is made due to a subjective thought and then is represented. This new approach to metaphor attracts the attention of critics to mental substructures which play an important role in the process of creating metaphor. Naser Khosro, as a thoughtful poet, philosopher of khorasani's style, has used metaphor in most of his odes, remarkable point in his poems is utilizing metaphors which all are in the realm of religious system and the poet expressed most of his concepts as conceptual metaphors. Since Naser Khosro's odes are placed more in the training context at first glance, they don’t take advantageous of literally techniques. So in this research, by a review of fifty pages of Naser Khosro's odes based on conceptual metaphor, this study is aimed to show that most of poet's intended concepts and ideas have been expressed in terms of cognitive metaphors, which were effective in raising the literary level of his words. Conceptual metaphor is considered as one of the most important examples of the relation of language and thought. The scholars of this theory believe that the place of metaphor is in thinking, and most of routine language applications are rooted in thinking. On this basis, the metaphor is not merely literary, it is also used in ordinary language. Of course, apart from routine language, literary metaphors are rooted in thought and in exploring metaphors from a cognitive and conceptual point of view; we need to look at their roots in thought and thinking. Naser Khosro, as one of the leading poets of educational and moral literature and one of the scholars, philosophers and thinkers of Khorasani style, has expressed many of his philosophical and verbal beliefs in the form of cognitive metaphors that have shaped his special style. By examining the text in a conceptual metaphor view, it was noted that many of the ideological and philosophical concepts of the poet were expressed in a literary form. According to the study of the first 50 pages of Naser Khosrow's poems, four main themes of thought were identified which were expressed in different metaphors. These four major mental mappings are: Philosophical mapping, Ismailia mapping, moral mapping and self-glorification mapping. Conceptual metaphor is expressed in the form of an objective mapping, in the studied cases; the poet expressed the concepts of four areas of philosophical, moral, Ismailia, and Self-glorifications in the different metaphors and expressed his concepts in the form of particular objective mappings that each group of these metaphors formed around a specific concept. In other words, by examining the metaphor in these poems, examined by the cognitive approach, is determined relationship between thought and literary style. In the sense that dominant thinking and dominant belief in the text, it forms a group of special metaphors that are directly linked to the poet's ideas and thoughts.
Keywords
