The Semantics of Colors in John Miltons Poem Paradise Lost - Курсовая работа

INTRODUCTION Colour is a subject that has captured assiduous attention from the earliest times. Its manifestation is discussed by Aristotle who advanced the first known theory of colour. The Greek philosopher determined four colours conforming to the four elements, namely earth, fire, water and wind. Colour terms also play an essential role in literature. In John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, colours are deeply rooted into a religious scenario and they serve as a means to express the poet’s religious convictions. Broadly speaking, the investigation of colour categories is an interesting field of study among scholars. However, in Paradise Lost, colour terms have not been studied extensively. Thus, the object of the present investigation is colour categories in J. Milton’s poem Paradise Lost. This investigation is vitally important both for linguistic and theological studies as the analysis casts a new light on the meaning of colour terms. The initial hypothesis could be formulated as follows: in Paradise Lost, colour categories serve as a vehicle to express J. Milton’s religious ideas and believes. Hence, the paper aims at analyzing the semantic meaning of colours in J. Milton’s poem Paradise Lost. In order to achieve the aim, the following tasks are to be fulfilled: § to introduce the subject of semantics; § to present the basic principles of colour semantics; § to analyze the chosen colour terms in J. Milton’s poem Paradise Lost. This descriptive-analytical paper advocates an interdisciplinary approach embracing the fields of cognitive semantics, philosophy and theology. The major part of theoretical insights is obtained from John Saeed’s Semantics (2009), Vyvyan Evan’s How Words Mean: Lexical Concepts, Cognitive Models, and Meaning (2009), Juan Eduardo Cirlot’s Dictionary of Symbols (2001), Friedrich Ungerer and Hans-Jörg Schmid’s An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics (1996) and Ray Jackendoff’s Semantics and Cognition (1983). The Russian psycholinguist Rebecca Frumkina claims that the study of denotative meanings is the secondary discipline. She also focuses on the analysis of the meaning of the whole expression, keeping within the limits of “Meaning ↔ Text” (Фрумкина 1984, p. Moreover, a ‘basic’ or ‘prototypical’ colour term in its denotative use carries the same function as non-basic colour terms such as rosy or indigo; as part of a physical, objective description. The prototypicality of colours can be illustrated by corpus examples involving comparison of a colour to an object or entity (Philip 2003, p. 43). Furthermore, all the words can be classified into semantic fields according to their meaning. A semantic field is a set of words with a recognizable semantic affinity. Cf. the following sets, which form the semantic field of colour terms (Finegan 2001, p. 196): a) basic colour terms: blue, red, yellow, black, white, etc; b) non-basic colour terms: indigo, saffron, royal blue, aquamarine. However, colours are able to form semantic fields within colour terms, e.g. semantic fields of light and darkness. Obviously, white would refer to light, whilst black to darkness. However, in the literary context, any other colour could refer to one of these fields, even if its denotative meaning does not refer to. In accordance with Marion Matschi, apart from the eleven BCTs, which seem to be more stable, countless non-basic terms are used either for poetic reasons or to draw a distinction between shades of a particular colour. The majority of colour terms borrowed into English were taken over from French and Latin, languages with a rich colour terminology. Therefore, all types of images and concepts (e.g. plants, animals, food, etc.) can be applied to indicate colour (Matschi 2004, p. According to M. Matchi, red has a positive notion if linked to love, vigour or strength (Matchi 2004, p.60). Cf. the following lines from Paradise Lost where red colour stands for love: “Bear with me, then, if lawful what I ask Love not the heavenly spirits, and how their love Express they, by looks only or do they mix Irradiance, virtual or immediate touch? To whom the angel with a smile that glowd Celestial rosy red, love’s proper hue, Answered: “Let it suffice thee that thou knowst Us happy, and without love no happiness.” (Milton 2005, p.