As metáforas da morte na poesia brasileira: um estudo à luz da linguística cognitiva

Abstract

This article parts from a systematically cognitive view of metaphor, based on the principles of conceptual metaphor (LAKOFF; JOHNSON, 1980, 1999: LAKOFF; TURNER, 1989; LAKOFF, 1987, 1993; KÖVECSES, 2005), to present a report with ten conceptual metaphors used in the licensing of the concept DEATH in the construction of poems written by Brazilian literary authors belonging to different literary schools. The focus is on the analysis of relations among conceptual metaphors identified under different cultural models that integrate the analyzed textual constructions. Such analysis allowed the identification and the description of diversified cognitive/cultural models inherent to the construction of the concept DEATH, which, in general, reveal both the eastern notion of death as an inevitable fact of human condition as well as a re-reading of this condition through the poets’ creative ability to present death more than once from different angles, not always the terrifying side; probably in an attempt to soften the terror embodied by the nature of its mystery.