Reception of Image Schemas in Literary Translation: a Cognitive Poetic Approach

• Applicant: Dr. Elena Dubenko, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 567784266

The research proposal presents the first study on literary translators’ reception of image schemas of the source literary work. It takes a cognitive poetic view of image schemas as the pre-conceptual structures belonging to the sensory-motor-emotive level of metaphoring that underpin the felt reality of literary work. The study focuses on the image schemas that underlie the pivotal metaphorical patterns of the source and the target text and serve as the basis for rich images conditioning the poeticalness/literariness of literary work. The working hypothesis of the study is that these primary schematic gestalts remain invariable in the target text, in contrast to the conceptual structures of more ‘superficial’ levels affected by cultural, linguistic and historical factors. This universality of image schemas in terms of aesthetic cognition is conditioned by their status of structures of the sensory-motor-emotive level that, according to the theory of embodied simulation, put certain constraints to the processes of imagination, making our imagination embodied. In this light, one of the central tasks of the project lies in the development of methodological basis for assessing translators’ response to the image schemas of the original literary work. To provide a comprehensive exploration of the issue under discussion the study will use a multi-method approach combined with an interdisciplinary orientation, drawing on different theoretical frames of reference. The methodology that has been elaborated on the basis of a cognitive poetic approach will allow to elicit the image schemas underlying source and target megametaphors by linguistic anchors, i.e. the foregrounded elements of literary text at the linguistic level of metaphoring. The validity of results will be also ensured by the analysis of the target texts produced both in real-life and experimental conditions, leaning on the responses of professional as well as non-professional translators.

• DFG Programme: WBP Position