ROBERT BRIDGES’ INDIVIDUAL STYLE IN HIS EARLY LYRICS: THE CONCEPTS SPHERE PECULARITIES
The author’s metaphorical system is one of the most important features of an individual style. The metaphor studies provide knowledge of peculiarities of the author’s mental picture of the world or his concepts sphere. The article deals with the metaphorical system features in the early lyrics of Robert Bridges the poet-laureate, one of the prominent representatives of the English poetry of the late XIXth - early XXth centuries. This article focuses on concept-targets namely those phenomena that have attracted the greatest interest of the author and, in his opinion, require rethinking. The analysis of the metaphor in the poems by Robert Bridges has provided information about the characteristics of the author’s individual style in general and made it possible to identify and describe the frequency core among the concept-targets in the poet’s early works. On the basis of the obtained data, the author makes conclusions about the methods of metaphorical interpretation of each concept-target included in the frequency core. Concepts Mental Sphere, Organ, Time and Plants make up the frequency core among the concept-targets. Space, Light, Water and Sound make up the second most frequent group, and the other units of the concepts sphere are on its periphery. The results of the analysis show that for the initial period of the development of Bridges’ individual style, it is characteristic to use several methods of metaphorical interpretation of each concept-target. The obtained results demonstrate that in the first period of his work Robert Bridges considered both the inner side of a person and the outside world. However, in the poet’s early poetry, there was no opposition between a man’s microcosm and the macrocosm of the surrounding world, which was typical of many romantic poets. Besides, the phenomena of nature attracted the author’s greatest interest. The prospects for the further studies include analysis of Robert Bridges’ later works that will contribute to establishing the patterns in the evolution of the author’s individual style.