The Cognitive Poetics of Forgetting: Memory, Metaphor, and Meaning in the Modernist Elegy

Abstract

This article explores the intersection of cognitive linguistics and literary analysis to examine the representation of memory and forgetting in the modernist elegy. Moving beyond traditional thematic readings, this paper employs the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), as pioneered by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, to analyze how the act of remembrance is not merely described but structured by the poets' metaphorical language. Through a close reading of W.B. Yeats's "The Tower" and selections from T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," this article argues that modernist elegies utilize a specific set of "source-path-goal" schemas and container metaphors to represent memory as a spatial and physical process. Crucially, this analysis reveals that the cognitive act of "forgetting" is not presented as a passive failure of recall but as an active, often violent, process of cognitive demolition or re-mapping, reflecting the broader cultural and epistemological crises of the early 20th century. By integrating cognitive poetics with historical literary study, this article demonstrates that the formal and metaphorical innovations of modernist poetry are deeply intertwined with the period's changing understanding of human consciousness. The findings suggest that a cognitive approach offers a rigorous methodology for tracing the philosophical underpinnings of literary form and its evolution in response to historical trauma.