A Cognitive Metaphorical Approach to Studying the Literary Devices in English Anti-War Poetry after World War I

Abstract

This research is chiefly concerned with anti-war poems in English literature written during and immediately after World War I, which gave prominence to a new group of poets whose poetic output was built on the foundation of their personal experience of fighting in World War I, with some of them dying in that war and many of their works published posthumously. This primary research utilises Cognitive Metaphor Theory to realise how specific conceptual metaphors evoke specific cognitive responses, in the context of the anti-war poems. Using Critical Metaphor Analysis, this study identifies and interprets cognitive metaphors in selected poems and their implications for the effects on the readers. Findings suggest that these poems heavily rely on shocking and repulsive metaphorical choices to deglamourise war and challenge existing romanticism about fighting in war. Repeated invocation of death, destruction, coupled with allusions towards indignity and loss of personhood, makes a strong anti-war stance. Conversely, their clever utilisation of first- and third-person verse narrative allows readers to identify with soldiers suffering on the battlefield and reflect on their own romantic notions of war, respectively. Future studies can expand on this work by bringing in other poetic works, both before and after this era, to further scholarship on this topic.