The Representation of Negative Mental States in the Poetry of John Keats: A Cognitive Approach to His Metaphors of Depression By: Yasir A. Al-Jumaili A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Sheffield Faculty of Arts and Humanities School of English Supervisors: Professor Jane L. Hodson and Dr. Sara Whiteley March 2018 “Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!” John Keats Abstract Much previous research on the representation of depression and melancholy in the poetry of John Keats has taken a biographical approach, judging his poetry with reference to known facts about his life. This study is different. It takes a cognitive perspective in which metaphors of negative mental states are analysed from a conceptual point of view. To do this I adopt current approaches to analysing metaphor, primarily Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and Conceptual Integration Theory (CIT). I make use of identification procedures and the analysis of the following elements: source domains, conceptual metaphors, and cross-domain mappings. The study is based on a selection of poems; only the parts that relate to negative mental states are analysed. I begin by focusing on two poems (‘To Hope’ and ‘Ode to a Nightingale’) while testing my methodology, and then I broaden my focus to a Keats’s whole collection of poems in the final stage of my research. Analysing such metaphorical expressions enables me to find out how these states are constructed through metaphors and what concepts are used in representing them. The cognitive methodology has proven to be a useful tool to account for the metaphorical representations of negative mental states in Keats’s poetry. The analytical investigation shows that Keats represents these abstract states in different ways. Through personification and reification, they are associated with various experiences from different domains that involve concrete and physical actions. Beside the recurrent conventional domains of darkness, gloom, cloud, weight and burden, Keats also represents negative mental states in terms of sickness. The technical medical knowledge provided to him through his former profession as a medical student enables him to establish a connection between physical illness and negative mental states. Fever, sickness, pain, ache, drowsiness and numbness are prolific domains for Keats to conceptualize negative mental states. Having established this valuable methodology, I consider future ways of applying it to study other metaphors in Keats. i Acknowledgements This Thesis would not have been possible without the encouragement and support of many people. First of all, I am highly indebted to Professor Jane Hodson and Dr. Sara Whiteley for their professional and excellent supervision. I really appreciate your constant guidance, intellectual advice and encouragement. Your invaluable discussions, insightful suggestions, unfailing help when my wheels are not on the right rail helped me a lot in my research journey. It has been a privilege and a pleasure to work with you both; I could not ask for better advisors. I should also thank Professor Joanna Gavins for introducing me to the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and providing me with a helpful bibliography. I would like to extend my thanks to the University of Sheffield for the unforgettable succour and the patience during my financial hardships. I am also grateful to Kurdistan Regional Government/Iraq for giving me this great opportunity to do this doctorate through their Scholarship Programme (HCDP). Special thanks to my wife and my lovely daughters for their patience, provision and understanding, your continual motivation is beyond expression. A big thank you to my big family, whose uninterrupted care and sense of humour have helped me a lot through this phase of my life. My gratitude goes to all of my friends who believed in me and stood by my side, I am grateful for your friendship and support, and for so many happy times together. Special thanks to my desk mates and colleagues at Jessop West for the ongoing encouragement. My kind regards go to Shahzad for the fruitful discussions and help. I also extend my gratitude to the administrative staff at Jessop West, the staff at the University Health Service, and the staff at the University library for the cooperative spirit. My thankfulness is likewise due to all those who have contributed to my work in any significant way. Finally, I should not forget those dear people who passed away before seeing this, I am sure they are happy for me. ii Contents Abstract i Acknowledgments ii Chapter 1: Introduction 1-41 1.1 Foreword 1 1.2 Literature Review 8 1.3 Depression in History 25 1.4 Key Concepts 39 Chapter 2: Methodology and Pilot Study 42-87 2.1 Methodological Introduction 42 2.2 Current view of Metaphor 43 2.2.1 Conceptual Metaphor Theory 44 2.2.2: Conceptual Integration Theory 49 2.3 Pilot Study 55 2.3.1 Brief Analysis of ‘To Hope’ 56 2.3.2 Brief Analysis of ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ 65 2.4 Conclusion 84 Chapter 3: Data Analysis: Identifying Metaphor and Their Structural Patterns 88-152 3.1 Identifying Metaphor 89 3.2 Classifying and Categorizing Metaphor 102 3.3 Application 105 3.4 Examining the Structural Patterns of Keats’s Metaphors 106 3.4.1 Propositional Analysis 111 3.4.2 Propositional Analysis of Keats’s ‘To Hope’ 115 3.4.3 Propositional Analysis of ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ 134 3.5 Conclusion 148 iii Chapter 4: Cross-domain Mapping 153-206 4.1 Introduction to Cross-domain Mapping 155 4.2 Cross-domain Mapping in ‘To Hope’ 160 4.3 Cross-domain Mapping in ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ 186 4.4 Conclusion 202 Chapter 5: Negative Mental States through Medical Terminology 207-258 5.1 Foreword 207 5.2 Metaphors of Fever 214 5.3 Metaphors of Sickness 227 5.4 Metaphors of Ache and Pain 239 5.5 Metaphors of Drowsiness and Numbness 251 5.6 Conclusion 256 Chapter 6: Conclusions 259-270 6.1 Review and Contribution of the Study 259 6.2 The Findings 261 6.3 Revisit of Methodology 265 6.4 Limitations of the Current Work 268 6.5 Future Works 269 References 271-286 iv Chapter One Introduction 1.1 Foreword But when the melancholy fit shall fall Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, And hides the green hill in an April shroud; Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave, Or on the wealth of globèd peonies; Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows, Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave, And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes. John Keats, ‘Ode on Melancholy’ (l. 11-20) There is a long tradition of Keats’s critics responding to this passage thematically, observing that the poem specifies the psychological experience of melancholy (depression). To mention very few, Walter Jakson Bate sees the poem as a protest “against the conventional symbols of oblivion, death, and melancholy” (Bate, 1963: 522). Miriam Allott believes that “the poem is a characteristic Keatsian statement about the necessary relationship between joy and sorrow” (Allott, 1970: 538). Stephen Reid argues that in the ‘Ode on Melancholy’, Keats “acknowledges the inevitability of depressive pain by accepting its source” (Reid, 1971: 406). Nicholas Roe argues that the ode “rejects the conventional trappings of a macabre, gothic imagination, in favour of a meditation on themes which had preoccupied Keats in ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ and ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’” (as cited in Strachan, 2003: 156). Other critics suggest a personal dimension; they believe that the speaker in this poem bases his conception of melancholy on personal experiences. 1 For example, Helen Vendler argues that “this is a personal poem in an impersonal guise” (Vendler, 1983: 166). She also adds that Keats attempts “a system of salvation” as the ode embodies “a long inner conflict concerning the life of sensation and its proper language, and the life of thought and its proper language” (Vendler, 1983: 7). Another group of critics attempt to establish a biographical link to this poem, suggesting that the speaker is depressed to utter such phrases. For example, Anupam Nagar and Amar Nath Prasad argue that ‘Ode on Melancholy’ “grew out of a persistent kind of experience which dominated Keats’s feelings, attitudes, and thoughts during that time” (Nagar and Prasad, 2005: 263). Therefore, the methods of judgement followed by most of Keats’s critics are either biographical or thematic; they judge the poet through literary evidence only. They read Keats’s poetry as a window to his mental states; they introduce mental states such as melancholy and depression as a peculiar feature of Keats. This impressionistic manner, of course, is imprecise because it does not allow us to understand how Keats constructs language to talk about such negative mental states. My concern is neither to approach Keats’s works thematically nor to prove whether he was depressed or not. My aim is to examine how he represents these negative emotional experiences and mental states such as ‘melancholy’, ‘sadness’, ‘depression’, ‘frustration’, ‘despair’ etc. in his works. For example, in the poem cited above, the experience of melancholy is represented in different scenarios: in the first scenario, the speaker uses simile to compare it to a physical object. ‘Melancholy’ is compared to a ‘weeping cloud’ that falls from heaven and ‘fosters the droop-headed flowers’. In the second scenario, the experience of melancholy, 2 which is explicitly named as ‘sorrow’, is represented as an object that can be glutted, ‘glut thy sorrow’.