=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3171/paper42
|storemode=property
|title=Stylistic and Conceptual Function of Epithet in Poetic Discourse: an Experience of “Tropes” Text Semantics Analysis Program Application
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3171/paper42.pdf
|volume=Vol-3171
|authors=Nataliia Romanyshyn
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/colins/Romanyshyn22
}}
==Stylistic and Conceptual Function of Epithet in Poetic Discourse: an Experience of “Tropes” Text Semantics Analysis Program Application==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3171/paper42.pdf
Stylistic and Conceptual Function of Epithet in Poetic Discourse:
an Experience of “Tropes” Text Semantics Analysis Program
Application
Nataliia Romanyshyn
Lviv Polytechnic National University, S. Bandera Str., 12, Lviv, 79000, Ukraine
Abstract
The article discloses the specifics of John Keats’s and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s individual
style (the English Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century) by analyzing the role and
semantic-cognitive aspects of epithets as elements of their poetic discourse. The application of
the program of text semantic analysis Tropes allowed identifying the most representative
conceptual spheres of poets’ artistic system, establishing the specifics of the lexical content of
each of the selected conceptual fields and its variability. Cognitive, semantic, stylistic and
contextual analysis revealed the role of epithets in verbalization of the selected conceptual
fields and micro concepts. The novelty of the paper consists in the experience to address the
problem of epithets analysis from the cognitive and corpus-based perspective.
Keywords 1
Epithet, poetic concept, Tropes program, English poetry, John Keats, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge.
1. Introduction
Cognitive poetics and cognitive stylistics actively apply formal methods of language material
description and processing, algorithms and methods of corpus research, natural language semantic
analysis with the help of special computer programs. However, the very nature of artistic language is
contradictory. On the one hand, the content of the text cannot be deduced from the sum of the meanings
of words, because the semantics of the text is influenced by various factors. On the other hand, the
frequency of textual linguistic elements, which is one of the means of formalizing this complex and
ambiguous lingual-cognitive and lingual-semiotic object, allows researchers to achieve a systematic
description of both the meaning of a particular text and the specifics of individual artistic systems.
The appeal of text linguistics to quantitative methods and corpus technologies is determined by the
desire of a higher level of language data formalization, to a comprehensive "continuous" analysis and
comparison of large amounts of language data, which helps researchers come to new conclusions about
the dynamics of author’s style and artistic system. Thus, statistical parameters are not the only objective
of literary text analysis. After all, the artistic world is multifaceted in nature. Its investigation requires
the integration of different research approaches, in which the artistic picture of the world is understood
as a mental structure, a holistic cognitive-reflexive model of reality actualized through a system of
specific artistic concepts. The set of artistic concepts of the text creates its conceptual sphere verbalized
by all linguistic resources – from lexical to suprasyntactic level – and actualized in the semantics of
figurative means, among which the significant place belongs to the epithet as a trope and a linguistic-
cognitive unit.
COLINS-2022: 6th International Conference on Computational Linguistics and Intelligent Systems, May 12-13, Gliwice, Poland
EMAIL: nataliya.romanyshyn@gmail.com (N. Romanyshyn)
ORCID: 0000-0001-5918-5423 (N. Romanyshyn)
©️ 2022 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)
The presented paper focuses on the epithet as one of the expressive means of poetic diction and a
linguistic-cognitive element which participates in creating the conceptual space of a poetic work and
its cognitive-semantic and linguistic-poetic features.
The aim of our study is to identify the specifics of John Keats’s and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s
individual style (the English Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century) by analyzing the role and
semantic-cognitive aspects of epithets as elements of their poetic discourse.
In the theory of artistic speech epithet has not been given due attention, which can be explained by
the fact that in the works of many modern authors the notion of "epithet" is so broad that under closer
examination it falls into hundreds of subjective concepts [1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6]. The general theory of epithet
takes into consideration, on the one hand, the mobility of the concept of "epithet" and, on the other –
its historical variability. In different periods of its development and in different national and linguistic
traditions epithet differs in its artistic functions and the nature of reflected national aesthetic thinking,
because the laws and principles of construction and development of poetic language vary in different
periods of its development [7; 8; 9; 10]. The epithet in modern literary criticism retains the status of an
artistically expressive figurative means that performs an aesthetic function and expresses the author’s
subjective attitude to the object. The morphological form of the epithet is not limited to one part of
speech. An epithet can be any word that serves as an artistic characteristic of reality. In linguistics, an
epithet is defined as an attributive unit that has special semantic characteristics [11].
Some linguistic definitions of "epithet" intensify its syntactic function. An epithet usually serves a
function of attribute, adverbial modifier or an address. I.V. Arnold defines the epithet as a lexical-
syntactic trope, which is characterized by not necessarily figurative meaning of the word, but the
mandatory presence of emotional, expressive or other connotations, which express the author's attitude
to the subject [12]. I.R. Galperin argues that any attribute can become an epithet if it is used in the
emotional sense rather than in the subject-logical one. The epithet, according to I.R. Galperin, is a means
of expression based on the selection of quality, features of the described phenomenon in the form of
attributive words or phrases that characterize this phenomenon in terms of individual perception. The
epithet is always subjective, it always has an emotional meaning or emotional coloring [13].
Analysis of the compositional structure of epithets and their morphological and syntactic expression
allows us to identify and describe a number of structural models of the epithet characteristic of modern
English. A + N model is the most common. The adjective can be simple, compound, create a
compositional line or be used in the highest degree of the adjective. According to the semantic criterion,
epithets are classified as associated and non-associated. Associated epithets indicate such features of
the object that are inherent in it according to objective indicators; this similarity can be subjective and
unexpected. Non-associated epithets are divided into figurative ones, which are based on some visual,
acoustic, tactile, figurative and imageless. Figurative epithets are similar to metaphors and artistic
comparisons and are called metaphorical or comparative epithets. Synesthetic epithets and sound-like
epithets are also distinguished.
2. An epithet in the idiostyle of John Keats
2.1. The conceptual function of the epithet in the poetic discourse of John
Keats (based on the frequency of noun components)
To determine the meaning and function of epithet in verbalization of the core concepts of John
Keats’s poetics we conduct a two-stage analysis of selected poetic texts. At the first stage, we build a
conceptual profile of the author's poetry. To do this we use the program of text semantic analysis
TROPES. According to TROPES program, the most representative conceptual spheres are: Body,
feelings, plants, time, animal, space/environment, abstract characteristics, mythology, water, death, life,
woman, sleep, language/communication, appearance, cognition, nature/land, represented by micro
concepts the nominations of which in poetic contexts exceed 100 tokens (lexical units). Thus, the
conceptual space of Keats's poetics has 17 most frequent conceptual fields presented in the diagram
Fig. 1.
cognitin nature/land
appearance
language body
sleep
woman
life
death
water
mythology
abstract
characteristics feelings
space/environmen
t
animal
plants
time
Figure 1: Frequency distribution of elements of Keats's poetry conceptual space
With the help of the above-mentioned program, we establish the specifics of the lexical content of
each of the selected conceptual fields and its variability. For this purpose, it was performed the
frequency analysis of verbalizers of micro concepts included in each of the selected fields. Body: eye,
head, hand, heart, hair, face, ear, forehead, bosom, breast. Feelings: joy, love, pleasure, sorrow, delight,
wonder, pity, hope. Plants: flower, tree, ivy, bush, laurel. Time: day, night, morning, evening, time,
end, hour. Animal: swan, skylark, nightingale. Space/environment: sun, planet, Mercury, moon, star,
Jupiter, Venus Saturn, heaven, space, sky, cloud, wind, lightning, rain. Abstract characteristics: silence,
richness, harmony, strength, tone, echo, voice, sweetness, bitterness, reflection, vigour. Mythology:
Heaven, Hell. Water: ocean, sea, river, lake. Death: death, tomb. Life: fate, destiny. Music: song, tune,
lullaby, trumpet, harp, melodies. Woman: woman, lady, maid, girl, damsel. Sleep: sleep, dream,
slumber, dosing. Language/communication: accent, word, speaking, book, poet, tale, story, gossip,
greeting, letter. Appearance: beauty, charm, loveliness. Cognition: thought, mind, knowledge, memory.
Nature/land: mountain, valley, forest, diamond, crystal, marble, sand, water, gold, silver, steel, iron,
garden, harvest, atom, desert.
To a greater or lesser extent, the selected nouns-nominations of artistic micro concepts undergo the
processes of artistic transformation (epithetization). Therefore, the second stage of the study is to
analyze the specifics of the processes of artistic transference. The relationship between the frequency
of use of the noun and the frequency of contexts of its epithetization was established. It was found that
different nouns have different degrees of epithetization, the high frequency nouns (we analyzed contexts
with a frequency of more than 50), may not undergo the processes of artistic meaning emerging. This
stage of analysis was performed applying the corpus analysis program Ant.conc. Artistic micro concepts
with low (less than 10 epithetization contexts) or zero degree of epithetization are the following: ear,
pity, skylark, nightingale, planet, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus Saturn, bitterness, Heaven, Hell, death,
accent, letter, gossip, knowledge, memory, atom, desert. However, some of the selected micro concepts
undergo the processes of unique epithetisation. For example: A gnawing — silent — deadly, quiet death;
A bitter death — a suffocating death; O kindly muse! Let not my weak tongue faulter; How vain for you
the niggard Muse to tease; But might I now each passing moment give To the coy Muse; From out its
crystal dwelling in a lake, By a swan's ebon bill/ There saw the swan his neck of arched snow. With the
help of the program, the contexts of micro concepts that are subject to the highest epithetization were
established – eye, head, hand, heart, voice, spirit, hour, day. See Table 1.
Table 1
The ratio of the frequency of artistic micro concepts and the degree of their epithetization in Keats’s
poetry
Micro-concept Frequency of usage Frequency of the Percentage
context of epithetization
eye 215 188 87%
hand 96 81 84%
heart 98 83 85%
voice 67 62 92%
spirit 89 80 90%
hour 61 53 86%
day 121 65 53%
It was also defined the degree of the epithets uniqueness on the basis of the defined micro concepts.
The percentage of the unique epithets is – 24%. For example: The downcast eye, repentant of the pain;
Their lips touch'd not, but had not bade adieu, / As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber, / And ready still
past kisses to outnumber; At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love. The above stated shows that the typical
feature of Keats’s poetics is the use of fixed, traditional associated epithets that tend to extend their
sense under certain contexts and actualize both specific and typical image models.
2.2. Figurative models of epithetization in the poetic discourse of John Keats
It is productive to consider the figurative processes of the text from the perspective of the theory of
conceptual metaphor, according to which mental spaces are structured by those entities that belong to
different spheres of verbal poetic image and relate to each other by the operation of mapping. The
essences of the source and target domain acquire a verbal embodiment in the fabric of the poetic text or
do not acquire a verbal embodiment, i.e. they are identified in the poem by unpacking the structures of
knowledge by association. The reconstruction of conceptual metaphors is an operation of mapping
between the components of the conceptual source and target domains. Thus, mental space is defined as
a structure that arises in the process of human perception of information and as a result of cognitive
activity of the individual. Mental spaces help to package human knowledge into concepts, as they are
purely conceptual and contain information of a linguistic, pragmatic and cultural nature. Identification
of a new cognitive structure is possible with the help of lingual-cognitive procedures involved in order
to establish the compliance of cognitive structure with archetypal or basic conceptual schemes [14; 15;
16; 17; 18].
The study of the epithet is possible from the standpoint of the theory of conceptual spaces, similar
to the analysis of metaphorical structures. As a result of research of semantics of epithets actualized for
verbalization of conceptual spheres "Human" and "Nature", on the basis of semantic and conceptual
analyzes it was established that in John Keats's poetry the most typical figurative models are the
following: Human – Human (physical, emotional, behavioral, social); Human – Animal; Human – the
Physical world (its parameters: light, color, temperature); Feelings – the Physical world (brightness,
color, substance), State – the Physical world (color, substance); Time – Man; Nature – Man; Nature –
Nature / Physical world (color, temperature, substance, quality); Plant – Human. It has also been
established the basic cognitive features of the concept which are defined in the course of creation of
figurative attribute (Tables 2, 3):
Table 2
Image models of the frequent epithets in the poetry of John Keats. Conceptual sphere “Human”
Artistic micro concept Basis of figurative attribute Types of frequent epithets
eye behavioral aspect, upcast eye, lovely eyes, Her
calmness, sensations, feelings, fair eyes, the greediest eye, thy
attitude humid eyes, charm'd romantic
eye, thy bright eyes, dark violet
eyes, my happy eye, twinkling
Light, glow, brightness, eyes, The large-eyed wonder,
crystal eye, searching eye, the
cat's wild eyes, The lustrous
passion from a falcon-eye,
these enslaving eyes, etc.
hand Sensations, feelings, the magic hand of chance,
attitude, actions, purity, age, soft-handed slumber, thy
strength, gentle hand , his blessing
hands, mean hands, rude hand,
thy soft hand, etc.
Colour, warmth, softness
heart Feeling, sensations, Cowards, who ever new
temperature, purity, attitude, their little hearts, proud heart
pain in his realm, thine impious
proud-heart sophistries, His
foolish heart, her frail-strung
warmth, softness heart , the brilliance of the
feminine heart, Too frail of
heart, gentle heart, the sad
heart, his pained heart
sweet heart-ache , hard-
hearted times, their big
hearts, the laden heart
voice Music, musical Thy lute- voiced brother
instrument, attitude, will I sing ere long
sensations, power airy voices, voices sweet
voices Warbling the while
as if to lull and greet,
a gorgon voice ,
charitable voice,
an eastern voice of solemn
mood, a sighing ,
a voice of solemn joy,
A trumpet's silver voice,
voice mysterious,
thy honied voice
his star-cheering voice
sweetly blending,
voice divine, voice,
majestic and elate
Lip, face Colour, sensationsm her pallid face,
attitude, actions, feelings her sweet face,
her dusky face,
her faint lips,
sad lips,
smooth-lipp'd serpent,
her lips pulp'd with bloom,
dazzled lips,
lip mature is ever awed,
his erewhile timid lips grew
bold,
hectic lips and eyes up-
looking mild
Joy Attitude, sensations calm enjoyment
fireside joys
Blush joyous blood
calm joy it was
that fairest joys
this world's true joys
the high joy
fireside joys
calm enjoyment
Sleep, dream Purity, sensations a seraph's dream
a long love-dream
The mournful wanderer
dreams
his first soft poppy dream
airy sleep from fathom
dreams
masque-like figures on the
dreamy urn
a pleasant sleep
unwilling sleep
stupid sleep
a sleepy dusk
most gentle sleep
Table 3
Image models of the frequent epithets in the poetry of John Keats. Conceptual sphere “Nature”
Artistic micro concept Basis of figurative attribute Types of frequent epithets
Day, night, hour Age, time, feelings day Smiling and cold and
gay,
my boyish days,
bitter days
The boisterous midnight,
The dull of midnight,
that dark lair of night,
the dreadful night ,
tender is the night,
rugged hours,
Glad was the hour,
this joyous hour,
malignant hour
Heaven, sun, moon, star Drightness, colour, actions the luxury of sunny beams
The dazzling sunrise
The pleasant sun-rise
the soft moon
my silver moon
the cold moonshine
the dooming stars
purple stars
Flower Colour, purity, sensations the wild flower ,
enchanted flowers,
the little cupped flowers ,
her rarest flowers
Cloud Actions, colour feathery clouds,
The bosomer of clouds, gold,
gray, and dun. Blue,
nectar'd clouds,
Noiseless, sub-marine
cloudlets,
Dark clouds faint,
cloudy phantasms
On the basis of adjectives-derivatives of the analyzed nouns, there are formed a number of
metaphorical epithets, epithets-personifications and epithets which are the part of metonymies and
metaphthonymies: those little bright-eyed things; large-eyed wonder; Whereat, methought, the lidless-
eyed train Of planets all were in the blue again; the blear-eyed nations in empurpled vests; The carved
angels, ever eager-eyed; Zephyr, blue-eyed Faery; soft-handed slumber; warm-hearted Shakspeare;
Sick-hearted, weary — so I took a whim To stray away into these forests drear; hard-hearted times
When I had heard e'en of thy death perhaps; A rough- voiced war against the dooming stars; Thy lute-
voiced brother will I sing ere long; Free- voiced as one who never was.
Based on frequency analysis, the ratio of semantic types of epithets was established: metaphorical
and compositional epithets, and the ratio of fixed, conventional epithets and original, individual-
authorial ones. As a result, it was found that Keats's poetic discourse is characterized by a high
frequency of fixed epithets, which expand their semantic structure and compositional model under the
influence of context. Nouns that receive artistic meaning belong to a variety of conceptual domains –
nature, man, abstract concepts, artifacts, art, light and color, physical features of objects, physical
phenomena, emotions, states, etc. Example: amber flame; A burning forehead, and a parching tongue;
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme. The lexical-semantic and stylistic analysis of some
randomly selected verses shows a significant predominance of fixed epithets over metaphorical epithets.
To verify this statement, the frequency of the ratio of fixed and original epithets was calculated based
on 100 lyrical poems of the author. Graphically the defined ratio is shown in Fig. 2.
2.3. The conceptual function of the epithet in the poetic discourse of Jon
Keats (based on the frequency of adjectives)
Adjective is the main structural and semantic element of epithet structures, as it acts as a poetic,
figurative definition. The artistic word is a kind of tool with which the author creates a figurative micro
world in order to achieve a certain aesthetic impact on the reader. Adjectives play an important role in
the style of poetic speech. The most significant role of the adjective as an artistic means is manifested
in the attributive relations.
3%
9%
fixed/traditional epithets
individual-author's epithets
metaphoric epithets
88%
Figure 2: Frequency ratio of semantic types of epithets in the poetry of John Keats
15%
26%
Subjective attributes
Objective attribute
Quantitative adjectives
59%
Figure 3: Frequency ratio of the main semantic classes of adjectives in the poetry of John Keats
(according to the Tropes program)
This is determined by two factors: a) its static features semantics (qualities, properties,
relationships); b) its connections with the noun, the subjectivity of which it concretizes through its
attributive semantics. Artistic attributes (we also use the term epithet in a broad sense) include various
types of adjectives, both emotionally evaluative expressive attributes that are used to create artistic
images, and attributes that do not necessarily embody the figurative nature of the word. Thus, based on
frequency analysis, we establish a range of semantic classes of adjectives that form epithets in the poetry
of John Keats. According to the Tropes program, epithets in the analyzed poetic texts belong to semantic
classes: objective, subjective and quantitative adjectives (attributes). See Figure 3.
Lexical-semantic, stylistic and contextual analysis of selected poetic contexts containing epithets,
however, suggests that the function of epithets are performed by adjectives belonging to all selected
semantic classes. For example, the following poetic contexts testify that the frequency of adjectives
(etheral, silver, numerous, many) which express an objective and subjective feature in the function of
an artistic attribute is relatively equal: The breezes were ethereal, and pure; But let a portion of ethereal
dew Fall on my head, That spreading in this dull and clodded earth /Gives it a touch ethereal — a new
birth : Be still a symbol of immensity; A firmament reflected in a sea There they discoursed upon the
fragile bar/ That keeps us from our homes ethereal; And what our duties there : ethereal things that,
unconfined, /Can make a ladder of the eternal wind, Beyond a mortal man impassion'd far; At these
voluptuous accents, he arose, Ethereal, flush'd, and like a throbbing star Seen mid the sapphire
heaven's deep repose ;And gave a roar, as if of earthly fire, That scared away the meek ethereal Hours
And made their dove- wings tremble; And canst oppose to each malignant hour Ethereal presence; And
the moon, all silver-proud, Might as well be in a cloud; If a cherub, on pinions of silver
descending/…those silver lamps that burn on high,/Or of the distance from home's pleasant lair/ As
from the darkening gloom a silver dove Upsoars, and darts into the eastern light; And now the
numerous tramplings quiver lightly; Numerous as shadows haunting fairily; The silver strings of
heavenly harp atween: /And let there glide by many a pearly car, Pink robes, and wavy hair, and
diamond jar.
The next stage of the study was to establish the frequency of adjectives in the poetry of John Keats
and to determine the main conceptual domains based on their frequency. The total number of adjectives
is 14,283 lexical items. The relationship between the frequency of use and the frequency of
epithetization of the adjective in context was established. The frequency and degree of epithetization
was determined by the results of concordance program application. The most frequent adjective with
the highest degree of epithetization is the adjective sweet. The ratio of the frequency of use and the
degree of epithetization of the ten most frequent adjectives is presented in Table 4.
Table 4
The ratio of frequency of usage and the degree of epithetization of the ten most frequent adjectives
in the poetry of John Keats
Adjective Frequency of Frequency of epithets Degree of epithetization
adjectives usage
sweet 185 176 95%
old 178 5 2.5 %
fair 162 98 60.4%
great 151 34 22.5%
soft 135 128 94.8%
bright 135 122 90.4%
gentle 91 76 83.5%
golden 91 73 80.2%
happy 85 43 50%
sad 79 30 37.9%
The results indicate that the high-frequency adjectives mostly tend to have a high degree of
epithetization, with few exceptions. Similar calculations were performed for medium and low frequency
adjectives. Adjectives silver, white, green, deep, clear, silent, cold, wild, despite their average
frequency, have a high degree of epithetization – more than 80%: All is cold Beauty ; pain is never don;
those enchantments cold; The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild ; wild commotions; the gentle
moon, and freshening beads; The silent-blessing fate, warm cloister'd hours; With music wing'd instead
of silent plumes; silent happiness.
Poetic language is the language of the author's artistic thinking and manifestation of his worldview,
a language with a special organization of lexical structure, emotionally, figuratively, aesthetically
marked. Due to its structure and semantic content, it helps the author to achieve the necessary imagery
and emotional expression in creating poetic pictures. Most of the analyzed adjectives are the ground of
fixed associated epithets that indicate general and at the same time individual characteristics of the
denoted objects. The performed calculations have shown that the dominant conceptual domains that are
artistically actualized by the adjectives in Keats' poetry are:
The sphere of sense perception – epithets created on the basis of synesthesia: how sweetly sad thy
melody, as sweet a silence, sweet sounds , the sweetness Of thy honied voice, sweet dewy blossom, the
soft lute, soft music.The sphere of emotional perception and emotional state of the subject: the sweet
converse of an innocent mind, sweet privacy, Sweet Hope, sweet head , as sweet a silence, sweet rest,
a sweet reprieve, faintness solemn, sweet, and slow, thy sweetest comforts, sweet enforcement and
remembrance dear, fair dreams , fair sooth, your brightest looks , soft ease, soft-handed slumber, the
soft luxury, gentle amity, a gentle luxury, The gentle heart, love's most gentle stream, her gentle
soul.Abstract notions, the sphere of religion and mythology: sweet poets, fair nymphs, heaven fair
.The sphere of subjective evaluation of the object of poetic depiction (colour, time, temperature, light,
physical parameters, etc.): thy fair morning, fair dawn Of life, fair blossom'd boughs, fair day, her fair
cheek more fair, those fair stars, fair trees, the bright mists , the bright waters, a bright casket of pure
gold, soft shade, Soft breezes , gentle windings.
Metaphorical epithets are the means of creating an emotional atmosphere in a poetic context.
Quantitative analysis shows that the largest group of sensory epithets is about 67% of the total number
of metaphorical epithets. By metaphorical epithets, the author mostly characterizes various aspects of
human perception of the environment – by a lyrical hero or a poet. We also observe a low frequency of
oxymoron epithets: Her wild and timid nature, All is cold Beauty; those enchantments cold; Smiling
and cold and gay pleasing woe.
Thus, the epithet occupies an important place in the poetry of John Keats. The poet assimilates
traditional figurative forms of fixed epithets and endows them with new meanings within specific poetic
contexts. Accordingly, the number of associated epithets is higher compared to unique author’s epithets.
The epithets created on the basis of artistic transfer of adjectives sweet, soft, bright are endowed by a
specific style creative functions. They are characterized by the highest frequency and reflect author’s
idiostylistic preferences to create images based on the principle of synesthesia, the predominance of
sensory-emotional component in artistic perception of reality.
3. An epithet in the idiostyle of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
3.1. Conceptual function of epithets in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poetic
discourse (based on the frequency of noun components)
The personality of the English romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge is almost unanimously
considered one of the unique and controversial in the history of English literature. The researchers of
Coleridge's heritage develop the thesis about the extraordinary creative power of poet's imagination, the
ambiguity and complexity of his images. Coleridge's poetry in its content and form is a synthesis of
English national literature traditions and new genre and image forms. Thus, scholars emphasize the
poet's innovation in mastering and poetic rethinking of traditional poetic images, tropes, among which
the prominent place belongs to the epithet.
To determine the meaning and function of epithet in the verbalization of the core concepts of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge's poetics, we perform a two-stage analysis of poetic texts. At the first stage, we build
a conceptual profile of the author's poetry. To do this, we use the program of semantic analysis of text
TROPES. According to TROPES program, the most representative conceptual areas are: Feelings,
body, time, plants, animal, religion, family, behavior, environment, cognition, man, music,
characteristics, space, abstract notions, literature, language/communication, woman, death & life,
mythology, water, sleep, nature/land, represented by micro concepts, the nominations of which in poetic
contexts exceed 200 tokens (lexical units). A special place in the poetic conceptual system of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge belongs to the artistic concepts child, home / housing / location, land, fight / war, law
and state. The frequency distribution of the elements of the conceptual space of Coleridge's poetry is
presented in the diagram, Fig. 4.
house, home, land war, fight
child feelings
location 2% 2%
nature, land 2%
5% 17%
3%
death & life
4%
waman
2%
languahe,
literature,
communication body
7% 13%
cognition
3%
environment &
space
6% time
behaviour 9%
4%
family plant
5% religion animal
6%
5% 5%
Figure 4: Frequency distribution of elements of the conceptual space of Coleridge’s poetry
Thus, the conceptual space of Coleridge's poetics has 21 most frequently integrated conceptual
fields. With the help of the program, we establish the specifics of the lexical content of each of the
selected conceptual fields and its variability. For this purpose, the frequency analysis of micro concepts
verbalizers included in each of the selected fields was performed. Feelings: love, friend, hope, fear, joy,
hope, pleasure, sorrow, honour, groan, anguish, pain, fancy, desolation, agony, delight, wonder, pity,
sadness. Body: eye, breast, neck, head, hand, heart, hair, face, ear, knees, mouth forehead, bosom,
blood, brain. Time: day, night, morning, evening, time, hour, seasons, spring, winter, yeas, future, time,
succession, eternity. Plants: flower, tree, ivy, bush, laurel, grass, bloom, names of flowers (rose,
primrose, etc.) myrtle, amaranth, moss. Animal: raven, skylark, nightingale, albatross, steed, cricket,
fly, fox, pigeon, sheep, dog, dove. Space/environment: cloud, rain, storm, sun, moon, star, wind,
heaven, space, sky, heaven, space. Behaviour: charity, patience, wanton, virtue, honour.
Language/communication: word, speaking, book, poet, sonnet, tale, content, wit. Cognition: thought,
mind, knowledge, memory, trance, wisdom. Abstract characteristics: silence, richness, harmony,
strength, tone, echo, voice, sweetness, bitterness, reflection, vigour. Water: ocean, sea, river, lake. Death
& Life: death, tomb, grave, fate, destiny, doom. Woman: woman, lady, mistress, young lady, girl,
maiden, beauty, charm.Housing, home, location: dwelling, house, home, fireside, side, door. Sleep:
sleep, dream. Nature/land: mountain, valley, forest, water, gold, silver, steel, iron, garden, harvest.
To a greater or lesser extent, the selected nouns-nominations of artistic micro concepts undergo the
processes of artistic transformation, acquiring figurative and artistic meaning (epithetization).
Therefore, the second stage of the study is to analyze the specifics of the processes of artistic
signification. The relationship between the frequency of use of the noun and the frequency of contexts
of its epithetization was established. It was found that different nouns have different degrees of
epithetization, used quite often (we analyzed contexts with a frequency of more than 100), may not
undergo processes of imagery transference. Similar to Keats's poetry, the most frequent noun in
Coleridge's poetry was the noun eye – 277 word usages. This stage of analysis was performed applying
the corpus analysis program Ant.conc. Artistic micro concepts with low (less than 10 epithetization
contexts) or zero degree of epithetization are the following: Lord, tear, child, death, life, name, head,
ear, pity, skylark, nightingale, power However, some of the selected micro concepts are uniquely
epithetized, for example: For silent death ; or, lost the mind's control; On me thy icy dart, stern Death,
be prov'd; Sweet Flower of Hope ! free Nature's genial child ! ; my weeping childhood, torn By early
sorrow from my native seat.; the viewless sky-lark's note. With the help of the program it was defined
the contexts of micro concepts that undergo the highest degree of epithetization - eye, head, hand, heart,
voice, spirit, hour, day. See Table 5.
Table 5
The ratio of frequency of artistic micro concepts and the degree of their epithetization in Coleridge’s
poetry
Micro concept Frequency of the nouns Frequency of the Percentage
contexts of epithetization
eye 277 145 52.3%
love 268 78 29%
heart 230 165 71.7%
night 128 56 43.5%
song 122 62 50.8%
tear 105 74 71.8%
voice 104 85 81.7%
dream 91 75 82.4%
For example: And sweet thy voice, as when o'er Laura's bier ; Sad music trembled thro' Vauclusa's
glade; That fearful voice, a famish'd Father's cry; The voice of feeble power Which gentle hearts shall
mourn; Pleasingly agitate their stagnant hearts; their little hearts at rest; these tears were tears of
light; Trembled, and vacant tears stream' d down my face; my love-lorn song; Weaving gay dreams of
sunny-tinctur'd hue; to follow the sweet dream; flitting dream; various-vested Night! Mother of wildly-
working visions ! hail!
Based on selected micro concepts the degree of uniqueness of epithets was also established. Among
the selected micro contexts the percentage of unique metaphorical epithets is 34%.
Lexical-semantic, stylistic and contextual analysis testifies to the productivity of metaphorical
epithet in Coleridge's poetic discourse. 1000 metaphorical contexts were analyzed; almost all contain a
metaphorical epithet in their structure. Both abstract and concrete concepts can be defined
metaphorically, which reflect the anthropocentric nature of the perception of the environment and its
artistic and poetic representation, the result of which is the spiritualization of the poetic objects (mainly
the elements of nature, cognition, imagination, fantasy, emotions).
The analyzed nouns, which showed the high frequency of usage but the medium or low degree of
epithetization, as a rule, are the basis of metaphorical transferences – they participate in the formation
of structurally different and semantically heterogeneous metaphors. According to the frequency of
nouns involved in the creation of metaphors, the conceptual areas feeling, human existence, nature are
represented by the largest number of metaphors. Metaphors, in which the key element is the noun, were
analyzed for their functional role in the structure of poetic micro contexts and their lexical-semantic
content. Thus, the noun metaphor involved in the artistic and poetic conceptualization of the conceptual
sphere of Human – the concepts of human being (in general), human psycho-emotional and cognitive
activity – often contains the following key words: love, heart, soul, spirit, joy, dream, voice, eye, breath,
mind. Noun metaphor involved in artistic poetic conceptualization of the conceptual sphere
World/Nature – the concepts nature, natural powers – most often contain the following key words earth,
sun, rock, stream, air, breeze, tree, sea, star, grove, sky. The most frequent lexical-semantic type of
poetic image created on the basis of these keywords is metaphor-personification (both the
spiritualization of objects of nature and abstract concepts, and the spiritualization of abstract concepts
that mean evaluation, emotion, state, phenomenon, action, behavior). Thus, the artistic and poetic
reproduction of the basic artistic and aesthetic principle of romanticism – the anthropocentric perception
of the environment – is realized in this way.
3.2. Figurative models of epithetization in the poetic discourse of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge
As we noted in the previous section, an epithet is a "condensed metaphorical form that is also the
result of artistic lingual-cognitive processes that can be described using the methodology of metaphor
analysis. As a result of research of semantics of epithets actualized for verbalization of conceptual
spheres "Human" and "Nature" in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poetry applying semantic and conceptual
analyzes it was established that the most typical models of figurative transference are: Human being –
Human being (physical, emotional, behavioral, social aspects); Man – Animal; Nature – Human being;
Nature – Nature – (natural / physical world: color, temperature, substance, quality); Nature – Human
being; Nature – Physical world (temperature, color). It was also established the main cognitive features
of the concept that are defined in the process of creating a figurative attribute (Tables 6, 7):
Table 6
Image models of the frequent epithets in the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Conceptual sphere
“Human”
Artistic micro concept Basis of figurative attribute Types of frequent epithets
eye Behavioral aspect,
sensations, feelings, attitude Judgement's eye severe;
peasant's raptur'd eyes; this
hollow eye, his heartless pain;
the young-eyed Poesy; young-
eyed Loves; meek-eyed Pity,
eloquently fair thou chaste-
eyed maid serene; the adoring
Seraphs' eyes ;her smiling eyes;
her lidless dragon-eyes
heart Feeling, sensations,
attitude, pain my thrill'd heart; But cease,
fond Heart ! this bootless
moan; To you my grateful heart
still fondly clings; anxious
heart; This heart with passion
soft to glow; the keen insult of
the unfeeling heart; Light-
hearted youth; my sickening
heart; A heart as sensitive to
joy and fear
Night Behavioral aspect, one dreadful night; the
sensations, feelings, attitude, wintry night-storm, wet and
actions cold; Polluted nights and days
of blasphemy; murky midnight
ride the air sublime When there
was uproar in the element; that
long wintry night; the
shuddering midnight; Flattery's
night-shade; sleep in endless
night;
joy Sensations, feelings, Exalts my soul, refines my
attitude breast, lives each pure pleasure
keener zest. And softens
Sorrow into pensive Joy; My
woes, my joys unshared; And
Joy's wild gleams that lighten'd
o'er thy face; why will Reason
intervene Me alid my promis'd
joys between; Her transient
bliss, her lasting woe. Her
maniac joys, that know no
measure; To share thy simple
joys a friend; With generous joy
he view'd his modest wealth; In
Merit's joy, and Poverty's meek
woe; one sweet joy
Song Sensations, feelings, Your cheerful songs, ye
attitude, actions, behavioural unseen crickets, cease !; Let
patterns songs of Grief your alter' d
minds engage; the land of
song-ennobled line; a broken
song; And sweet your Voice, as
Seraph's song; sternly chides
my love-lorn song; her cheering
song; heart-stirring song;
sweet undersong 'mid jasmin
bowers; I raised the impetuous
song, and solemnised his flight;
laborious song; her magic
song; sweet song; An Orphic
song; indeed,A song divine of
high and passionate thoughts;
Dear under-song in Clamour's
hour
voice Music, musical
instrument, attitude, To their own music
sensations, power chaunted Thy long-sustained
Song finally closed Sole voice,
when other voices sleep, the
glad voice; The voice of feeble
power; mortal voice; That
fearful voice, a famish'd
Father's cry; startling voice; In
soft impassion'd voice;
conectly wild deep impressive
voice; This dark, frieze-coated,
hoarse, teeth-chattering
month Hath borrow' d Zephyr's
voice, and gazed upon thee;
With blue voluptuous eye with
harp and mingled voice; My
soul beheld thy vision ! ;
Nature's sweet voices, always
full of love And joyance;
mighty Voice; Where
Wisdom's voice has found a
listening heart;
dream Sensations, feelings, Unholy Pleasure's frail and
attitude, actions, behavioural feverish dream; And thine the
patterns happy waking dream ;
feverous dreams; the sweet
dream; the love-lorn serenade
That wafts soft dreams to
Slumber's listening ear; And I
hurled the mock-lance thro'
the objectless air, And in open-
eyed dream proved the
strength of my arm; A wild and
dream-like trade of blood and
guile
Table 7
Image models of the frequent epithets in the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Conceptual sphere
“Nature”
Artistic micro concept Basis of figurative attribute Types of frequent epithets
Cloud Feelings, actions The clouds of Sorrow at her
presence flee; those purple
clouds; the Sun's unclouded
flame; Call'd the red lightnings
from the o'er-rushing
cloud;And watch the clouds,
that late were rich with light
;Dim Hour ! that sleep'st on
pillowing clouds afar; the
mutinous cloud;s A Vapour
sail'd, as when a cloud, exhaled
From Egypt's fields that steam
hot pestilence
moon Brightness, colour, actions Or, silvery, stole beneath the
pensive Moon; When fades the
Moon all shadowy-pale; the
pale Moon sheds a softer day;
Moon-blasted Madness when
he yells at midnight; mild
moon-mellow' d foliage; silent
moonlight; the star-dogged
Moon; the busy moonlight
clouds; the quiet moonlight
sea; the orb with moon-like
countenance
sky Colour, purity, sensations, beneath some barbarous
feelings sky; the fading sky in shadowy
flight; the soften' d sky; the
ungentle sky; a hot and copper
sky; blue rejoicing Sky; the
silent Sky
Stream Colour, purity, sensations, his untam'd stream; And
feelings, activity, colour Fancy's vivid colourings stream;
Cam rolls his reverend stream;
along the bright Rainbow on a
willowy stream; sweet Stream,
Pride of the Vale ;hy useful
streams; Unboastful Stream; By
lonely Otter's sleep-persuading
stream; many-tinted streams
and setting Sun ; the lucid
stream; The glad stream Flows
to the ray; a stormy stream;
This stream so brightly flowing;
the bare stream flowing in
brightness,
On the basis of adjectives derived from the analyzed nouns, a number of metaphorical epithets and
epithets-personifications and epithets that are part of metonymies and metaphthonymies are formed:
My harass'd Heart was doom'd to know The frantic Burst of Outrage keen; But cease, fond Heart ! this
bootless moan; No more your sky-larks melting liom the sight Shall thrill the attuned heart-string with
delight; Is my heart destin'd for another blow; Exalts my soul, refines my breast, lives each pure
pleasure keener zest.And softens Sorrow into pensive Joy; A heart as sensitive to joy and fear; With
generous joy he view'd his modest wealth; why will Reason intervene Me alid my promis'd joys
between; Sole voice, when other voices sleep, Dear under-song in Clamour's hour; Thy long-sustained
Song finally closed; An Orphic song indeed, A song divine of high and passionate thoughts To their
own music chaunted; The Halcyon hears the voice of vernal hours; Where Wisdom's voice has found a
listening heart; My soul beheld thy vision ! Where alone. Voiceless and stern, before the cloudy throne,
Aye Memory sits; O'er wayward childhood; The Halcyon hears the voice of vernal hours; Each lonely
pang with dreamy joys combin'd, And stole from vain Regret her scorpion stings.
The conceptual spheres "Human" and "World, Nature" are represented by the largest number of
epithets. Epithets, in which the key element is high frequency nouns, were analyzed for their functional
features in the structure of poetic micro contexts and their lexical and semantic content. Thus, the
epithets involved in the artistic and poetic conceptualization of the sphere of Human being – the
concepts of man (in general), psycho-emotional and cognitive activity – often contain the following
keywords: earth, sun, rock, stream, air, breeze, tree, sea, star, grove, sky. The most frequent lexical-
semantic type of poetic image created on the basis of these keywords is metaphor-personification (as
spiritualization of objects of nature and abstract concepts, and spiritualization of abstract concepts that
mean evaluation, emotion, state, phenomenon, action, behavior). The complexity of cognitive processes
underlying the metaphorical blending of conceptual domains is reflected in the high frequency of
compositional metaphors, metaphorical epithets, epithets as parts of compositional metaphors, artistic
comparisons that cover many facets of the depicted phenomenon, in which the artistic images are
formed on the basis of intertwining of different cognitive formants – sound, acoustic parameters, color,
action. Natural elements and phenomena are not just personified, spiritualized, but, being maximum
abstract, manifest themselves as active subjects that have such features as movement, emotionality,
intelligence, communication skills, changes of states and emotions, which enhance their textual
productivity.
On the basis of frequency analysis the ratio of semantic types of epithets, metaphorical and
compositional epithets and the ratio of fixed, conventional epithets and original, author’s individual
ones was established. As a result, it was found that Coleridge's poetic discourse is characterized by a
high frequency of fixed epithets, which are expanding their semantic structure and compositional model
under the influence of context. Nouns that receive figurative meaning belong to a variety of conceptual
domains – nature, man, abstract concepts, artifacts, art, light and color, physical phenomena, emotions,
states, etc. For example: the stern preceptor's face, my swimming book, the thin blue flame, the thin
blue flame/Lies on my low-burnt fire, the thin blue flame/Lies on my low-burnt fire, The lovely shapes
and sounds intelligible/Of that eternal language, How exquisite the scents/ Snatched from yon bean-
field! and the world so hushed!/The stilly murmur of the distant Sea/Tells us of silence.
41% fixed epithets
43%
author's original
metaphoric
16%
Figure 5: Frequency ratio of the semantic types of epithets in the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The lexical-semantic and stylistic analysis of the randomly selected verses shows a significant
predominance of fixed epithets over metaphorical epithets. To verify this statement, the frequency of
the ratio of fixed and original epithets was calculated based on 100 lyrical poems of the author.
Graphically the defined ratio is shown in Fig. 5.
As a result of the analysis, we conclude that the role of the epithet in the poetic picture of the world
of Samuel Taylor Coleridge is significant and the productivity of basic image models that reflect the
individual author's rethinking of traditional, archetypal imagery reflects the dominance of
anthropocentric artistic worldview. Quantitative data obtained by applying the appropriate tools for
computer analysis of the created author's poetic corpus allow to cover the maximum volume of contexts
of epithetization and to contribute to the achievement of maximum objectivity of the research.
3.3. Conceptual function of epithets in Samuel Taylor Coleridge poetic
discourse (based on the frequency of adjectives)
The adjective is the main structural and sense-creating element of epithet structure and performs the
role of poetic, imagery attribute. The epithet as a language expressive means participates considerably
in developing the language picture of the world of a single individual and ethnic community and reflects
general language and literary traditions in a certain epoch. Epithets testify to the great variability of
language in terms of word combinability and manifest the richness of national language poetic potential.
Epithet is the oldest figurative device of language endowed with language aesthetic and cognitive
function. The polysemantic nature of most adjectives enables their combinability with semantically
different lexemes reflecting both the objective and subjective features of things on the basis of
metaphoric transference of the defined characteristics (according to the similarity of colour, form,
shape, purpose, etc.).
Based on quantitative analysis, we defined the spectrum of semantic classes of adjectives that create
epithets in the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. According to Tropes program data, the epithets in
the analyzed poetic texts belong to the following semantic classes: objective, subjective and quantitative
attributes (See Fig. 6).
20%
objective
subjective
58% quantitative
22%
Figure 6: Frequency ratio of the main semantic classes of adjectives in the poetry of Samuel Taylor
Coleridge (according to the Tropes program)
Lexical semantic, stylistic and contextual analysis of the selected poetic contexts that contain
epithets, however, makes it possible to assume that the function of epithet is performed by the adjectives
belonging to the semantic classes of subjective and objective adjectives. For example, the following
poetic contexts testify to the similar frequency of adjectives (dear, gentle, dark) that express the
objective and subjective feature of the concept in the function of figurative attributes: Dear silent
pleasures of the Heart; Dear native Brook ! wild Streamlet of the West; the dear delicious land of
Faery; their stormy wilds so dear; yet Spenser, gentlest bard divine; Thou gentle Look, that didst my
soul beguile; the gentle misery of a sigh; the ungentle sky; What greater bliss could all this wealth
supply; the great Comforter that rules above; A horror of great darkness wrapped her round; Wide
scatter round each dark and deadly weed; Till what time Death shall pour the undarken'd ray; strange
tales of fearful dark decrees; This dark, frieze-coated, hoarse, teeth-chattering month; dark
remembrance and presageful Fear; times and seasons bloody and dark.
The next stage of the research was to define the frequency of adjective in Coleridge’s poetry and to
define the main conceptual domains of epithetization based on this frequency. The total number of
adjectives is 15 283 lexical units. It was established the frequency of adjectives usage and the frequency
of epithets created by these adjectives in contexts. The frequency and the degree of epithetization was
defined according to the application of concordance. The most frequent adjective with the highest
degree of epithetization is the adjective sweet. The ratio of frequency of usage and the degree of
epithetization is represented in the Table 8.
Table 8
The ratio of frequency of usage and the degree of epithetization of the ten most frequent adjectives
in the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Adjective Frequency of the contexts Frequency of the epithetization Percentage
sweet 123 98 79.7%
dear 120 37 30.8 %
gentle 82 73 89.2%
bright 80 68 85%
dark 72 52 72.2%
soft 69 56 81.1%
fair 62 37 59.6%
deep 57 23 40.3%
wild 53 27 50.9%
The results show that the adjective with the highest frequency do not demonstrate the tendency to
high degree of epithetization. The most frequent is the adjective sweet, however, the adjectives bright,
gentle, soft manifest the highest degree of epithetization, with some exceptions. The adjectives lovely,
light, silent, pale, dim, cold, silver, white, green, deep, clear have low or medium degree of
epithetization – they are predominantly used in their direct meaning and perform the function of direct
attribute of the noun. The calculations proved that the dominant conceptual domains that are figuratively
defined by the adjectives in the poetry of Coleridge are: The sphere of sense perception: thy flute those
tender notes again, While near thee sits the chaste-ey'd Maiden mild Darts the fond question and the
soft reply Pours the soft nuirmuring of responsive Love; But yet his speech, it was so soft and sweet;
our sweet sequestered Orchard-Plot; the mild sea-air; Within whose mild moon-mellow' d foliage hid
Thou warblest sad thy pity-pleading strains; in the month of blossoms, at mild eve; with mild sorrow;
The tender ivy-trails crept thinly; I felt it prompt the tender Dream; thy flute those tender notes again,
While near thee sits the chaste-ey'd Maiden mild; Pours the soft nuirmuring of responsive Love. The
sphere of emotions and emotional state of the subject: This heart with passion soft to glow; But,
tender blossom, why so pale; Such are the tender woes of Love; I felt it prompt the tender Dream;
Virtues and Woes alike too great for man In the soft tale oft claim the useless sigh; So sweetly, that they
stined and haunted me; Of my sweet birthplace, and the old church-towe; With courteous looks and
mild; These Virtues may'st thou win : With face as eloquently mild; thy more serious eye a mild reproof;
thy mild laws of Love unutterable; Darts the fond question and the soft reply.
It was observed a considerable predominance of compositional epithets that we understand as a
stylistic device of constellation in which the subject of attribution and the attribute itself are extended
by the additional semantic complexes or are expressed implicitly.
4. Epithet in the poetic systems of John Keats and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(comparative aspect)
The application of quantitative, stylistic and contextual analysis it was established that the epithet is
the third in significance trope of the poetic system of both authors, proceeded by metaphor and simile.
It was also defined the ratio of figurative means of verbalization of dominant conceptual domains in the
poetry of the analyzed authors. For this purpose, applying the methodology of general sampling, the
metaphor, similes and epithets were selected from 20 the most well-known verses of Keats and
Coleridge (predominantly the lyrical poetry) and by quantitative calculation their absolute and relative
frequency in these poetic works was defined. That allows us to assume the possible correlation of these
tropes in the poetry of both authors.
It was defined that the artistic comparison (simile) is the most frequent means of artistic
conceptualization. Practically even distribution of similes in the texts of the authors manifest the
productivity of imagery world perception and reflection of objects of artistic depiction on the ground
of versatile associations and mental operation of assimilation and comparison. In the same way the
absolute and relative frequency of metaphor were defined. The frequency ratio of basic tropes in the
poetry of Keats and Coleridge is represented in the Table 9.
Table 9
Absolute and relative frequency of tropes in the poetry of John Keats and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (20
poetic contexts analysis)
Poet Simile Metaphor Epithet
John Keats 245 44,6% 192 34,9% 112 20,4%
S.T. Coleridge 276 44,5% 196 31,6% 148 23,8%
The next aspect of frequency analysis was the establishment of types of integral mental spaces and
their content in the poetic works of the authors. The most frequent mental spaces are Human, Nature
and Abstract concepts, respectively, which ratio is the following: human - 48.29%; nature - 35.62%;
abstract notions –10.96%. Such frequency data confirm the thesis of a special role of nature and man
interaction in the romantic artistic conceptualization of the world, as well as artistic and poetic
embodiment of the relationship between man and nature, reflection of human nature, its impact on the
environment and the impact of nature on human existence in early nineteenth century English poetry.
The most frequent conceptual spheres of Human and the World are reflected in the high frequency
of artistic and poetic concepts of corporeality, psycho-emotional parameters of human being, natural
phenomena and elements of animate and inanimate nature, cosmic objects and spatial concepts.
Accordingly, the lingual-cognitive representation of the mental space of Nature includes the following
artistic poetic concepts: mythological, supernatural beings, man, living beings in terms of
manifestations of their appearance, behavior, sensuality. Nature-centered images become
anthropocentric. Accordingly, a frequency analysis of the distribution of mental spaces, conceptual
spheres and artistic concepts in the poetry of a particular author was conducted. It was found that within
the most productive mental spaces Human and Nature both poets focus on artistic conceptualization of
the inner state of man, the sensory aspect of perception of the environment, created, respectively, based
on parallelism between spatial concepts and anthropocentric concepts. For the poetry of John Keats,
one of the productive and dominant sphere was the mental sphere "Language", which undergoes a high
degree of metaphorical actualization.
High frequency phrases Adj. + Noun in the structure of metaphorical contexts testifies to the
productivity of metaphorical epithet in the poetic discourse of Coleridge and Keats. Of the analyzed
388 metaphorical contexts almost all contain a metaphorical epithet in their structure. Both abstract and
concrete concepts can be metaphorically defined, which also testifies to the high frequency of the
semantic-cognitive operation of mapping those features of the concepts of the source domain to the
concepts of the target domain (according to Lakoff and Turner), which reflect the anthropocentric nature
of the perception of the environment and its artistic and poetic representation. The result of these
processes is the spiritualization of the subject of imagery representation (mostly the elements of nature,
cognition, imagination, fantasy, emotions, etc.).
Both poets’ imagery systems are characterized by the presence of tropes based on the phenomenon
of synesthesia as the unity of visual, acoustic, sensory, emotional and rational perception of the
environment; by the usage of fixed associated metaphoric epithets (mainly on the basis of adjectives
sweet, soft, deep, green), which are the constants of the folk poetic picture of the world as constant
representatives of the phenomena of environment, human existence and activities. In the individual
poetic contexts they are filled with new meaning: sweet abode, sweet flower, sweet dream, soft voice,
soft glow, soft soul – Sweet songsters wable in a shade their wild-long melody; Ye pine-grows, with
your soft and soul-like sounds.
Adjectives that perform in the text the function of both attribute and epithet are often qualitative
adjectives that denote light, color, temperature, mode and state, sensory perceptions and sensations:
clear, dark golden, warm, cold.
According to the frequency of nouns involved in the creation of metaphors and metaphoric epithets,
the conceptual areas of "Human" and "World, Nature" were identified as those represented by the
largest number of above mentioned tropes. Metaphors and metaphoric epithets, in which the key
element is the noun, were analyzed for their functional features in the structure of poetic microcontexts
and lexical-semantic content. Thus, the noun metaphors and metaphoric epithets involved in the artistic
poetic conceptualization of the conceptual sphere of Human – concepts of man (in general), psycho-
emotional and cognitive activity – often contain keywords: love, heart, soul, spirit, joy, dream, voice,
eye, breath, mind. Noun metaphors and metaphoric epithets involved in the artistic and poetic
conceptualization of the conceptual sphere of the World/ Environment – the concept of nature, natural
elements – often contain the keywords earth, sun, rock, stream, air, breeze, tree, sea, star, grove, sky.
The most frequent lexical-semantic type of poetic image is also metaphor-personification (embodying
both the spiritualization of objects of nature and abstract concepts, and the spiritualization of abstract
concepts that mean evaluation, emotion, state, phenomenon, action, behavior). Thus, the artistic and
poetic reproduction of the basic artistic and aesthetic principle of romanticism – anthropocentric
perception of the environment – is realized.
5. Conclusions
The conceptual level of a work of art is a structured system that contains elements of varying degrees
of complexity and abstractness. The main way of explicit verbalization of conceptual information is
considered the keywords, their compatibility, and thematic vocabulary. To optimize the process of
keyword selection, the method of concordances compilation of both individual works and the whole
array of author's texts is highly productive. Created concordances for the relevant corpus of text allow
selecting and grouping conceptually loaded vocabulary according to the thematic layer of the context,
identifying the necessary fragments of texts for further analysis of distribution, compatibility and
semantic content of lexical verbalizers of concepts within micro- and macro contexts.
In this paper, based on frequency analysis using the Tropes semantic text analysis program and the
Ant.conc concordance program, the stylistic and conceptual function of the epithet in the poetry of John
Keats and Samuel Taylor Coleridge was defined.
Definition of the author's conceptual system based on the frequency of vocabulary. John Keats’s
dominant artistic conceptual spheres and concepts: Body, feelings, plants, time, animal,
space/environment, abstract characteristics, mythology, water, death, life, woman, sleep,
language/communication, appearance, cognition, nature/land. The conceptual space of Keats's poetics
has 17 most frequent conceptual fields. With the help of the program, the contexts of micro concepts
that undergo the highest epithetization were established - eye, head, hand, heart, voice, spirit, hour,
day.
Thus, the epithet occupies an important place in the poetry of John Keats. The poet assimilates
traditional figurative forms, stable, fixed epithets, and endows them with new meanings within specific
poetic contexts. Accordingly, the share of associated epithets is higher compared to the unique authorial
epithets. The epithets created on the basis of artistic transfer of adjectives sweet, soft, bright, which are
characterized by the highest frequency and reflect author’s individual preferences to create images
based on the principle of synesthesia, the predominance of sensory-emotional component in artistic
perception of reality.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Dominant artistic conceptual spheres and concepts are: Feelings, body,
time, plants, animal, religion, family, behavior, environment, cognition, man, music, characteristics,
space, abstract notions, literature, language/communication, woman, death & life, mythology, water,
sleep, nature/land. The conceptual space of Coleridge's poetics has 21 most frequently integrated
conceptual fields. The relationship between the frequency of use of the nouns and the frequency of
contexts of their epithetization was established. It was found that different nouns have different degrees
of epithetization, used quite often (we analyzed contexts with a frequency of more than 100), may not
undergo processes of figurative transference.
Both in Keats's and Coleridge's poetry the most frequent noun was the noun eye – 277 word usages.
The contexts of micro concepts that undergo the highest epithetization are established – eye, head, hand,
heart, voice, spirit, hour, day. The main figurative models of epithetization: Human - Human (physical,
emotional, behavioral, social); Human - Animal.
The complexity of cognitive processes underlying the metaphorical blending of conceptual domains
in Coleridge's poetry is reflected in the high frequency of compositional metaphors, metaphorical
epithets, epithets in the structure of compositional metaphors, artistic comparisons that cover
multifaceted aspects of the depicted phenomenon. The poetic images are created on the basis of
interrelations between various semantic-cognitive forms – sound, acoustic color, actional parameters of
the concepts of the source domain.
Coleridge's poetic discourse is characterized by a high frequency of fixed epithets, which undergo
an expansion of their semantic structure and compositional model under the influence of context. Nouns
that receive figurative meaning belong to a variety of conceptual domains – nature, man, abstract
concepts, artifacts, art, light and color, physical phenomena, emotions, states. The most frequent
adjective with the highest degree of epithetization is the adjective sweet.
The poetical systems of both authors are characterized by the high frequency of tropes (epithets)
based on the phenomenon of synesthesia as the unity of visual, acoustic, sensory, emotional and rational
perception of the environment; by the extensive use of conventional metaphors, comparisons and
epithets (on the adjectives sweet, soft, deep, green), which are fixed in the folk poetic picture of the
world as constant representatives of environmental phenomena, human existence and activities filled
with new meaning.
The further perspectives of the research presupposes the disclosure of structural types of epithets in
the poetic systems of the authors, their role in the development of the general artistic peculiarities of
English Romantic poetry.
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