Kolesova A. The image of the Beloved in the British and American poetry of the XIX-XXth centuries: linguistic, cognitive and gender aspects

This research focuses on revealing linguistic, cognitive and gender properties of the image of the Beloved in the British and American poetry of the XIX-XX centuries. The image of the Beloved is treated as linguistic, cognitive and social cultural construal which reflects linguistic and creative experience of the poet. Gender, lexical and grammatical aspects of the verbal poetic images are revealed via gestalt analysis. It has been proved that the gestalt image of the Beloved is verbalized by means of its gestalt-qualities, embodied in the nominative units of verbal poetic images. It is claimed that classification of the image of the Beloved according to its gestalt center, expressed by a notional part of speech (the adjective, the verb or the noun), enables to explain the changes in its gender characteristics and expose language and stylistic means of its creation. Attributive image of the Beloved is created by verbal poetic images, gestalt-center of which is expressed by metaphoric and metonymic epithets, embodied by adjectives. It reflects verbalized knowledge of ideal beloved woman or man in poetic texts of the XIX century. The knowledge about the relationship between the beloved, their manner of behavior is verbalized in parabolic and oxymoronic verbal images which create actional type of the image of the Beloved in poetic texts of the XX century. The social status of the beloved is actualized in substantive image of the Beloved and is incorporated in symbolic verbal poetic images with nouns as gestalt-center. The quantitative analysis testifies its dominant use in the poetic texts of the XX century. It is maintained that gender senses are realized in gender metaphors, gender oxymora, gender symbols, reconstructed via conceptual and cognitive analysis of verbal poetic images. Key words: image, verbal poetic image, gender metaphor, gender oxymoron, gender symbol, gestalt-center, gestalt-quality, lexical-grammatical aspect.