Mohammadreza Amini
Abstract
The emergence of cognitive poetics in recent decades has resulted in a new attention to the relation between language and mind as well as a focus on what happens in the mind when one ...
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The emergence of cognitive poetics in recent decades has resulted in a new attention to the relation between language and mind as well as a focus on what happens in the mind when one reads a poetic text. In a part of this theory that shows the importance of the "figure" and "ground" in human perception, it is suggested that in the analysis of human perception of poetry, these two concepts should be carefully considered because they can show how mental attention of the audience could be attracted and influenced by it. The present article firstly tries to provide a correct understanding of the general view of this type of poetic analysis especially in considering the specific definition of "interpretation" and "reading" in cognitive poetics. Then, by focusing more on the definitions and functions of figure and ground, it presents some examples of them in Hafez's poetry. After that, in order to evaluate more objectively the theoretical efficiency and practical utility of this type of cognitive analysis, the main pattern of figure and ground in a random Hafez sonnet is extracted. Then, following a method based on two concepts of "interpretation" used for micro-study and "reading" for macro-study in this theory, we have studied other examples in Hafez's Divan. This study has achieved significant results for the evaluation of Hafez' poetry. Furthermore, it can be concluded that this method can be useful for studying the works of other Persian poets too.
