Subjective realization in sonnets by metaphors

Abstract

Aligned with studies of metaphor in discourse, this paper looks at the role played by metaphors in achieving communicative purposes of sonnets. Taking the notion of genre as our primary analytical basis, we investigate how novel metaphors and, especially, their recognizability – i.e., their metaphoricity – can prompt subjective realization and subjective socialization in a corpus of sonnets. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses of activation devices of metaphoricity in such a corpus demonstrate that creative metaphors, as well as other verbal strategies related to metaphors – such as saturation and directness –, establish wide relations with both the creation of and the access to the figurative world of the poems. At the end of the day, we can conclude that metaphor recognizability, rather than metaphor occurrence, is mostly responsible for achieving communicative purposes in sonnets (and in poems in general).

Keywords: metaphoricity, subjective realization, literary discourse.