Allegorical Harmony for the Focus of the Woman and the Poet in the Poetry of Bashar Bin Burd from a Cognitive Approach (Studied Poetic Models)

Abstract

Objectives: The research aims to achieve an interpretative understanding that connects figurative flashes in carefully crafted examples of the poetry of Bishr ibn Bard (d. 167 AH) through the cognitive blending theory that engages with the text and invokes the collective space generated from the entered spaces. It also aims to highlight the role that metaphor plays in the harmony and consistency of the thoughtful poetic text as a mental issue arising from the interaction of the creator with his surroundings.

Methods: Given the nature of the study and its mechanisms, the research relies on a descriptive approach to describe the phenomenon and an interpretative methodology to reveal the features of figurative harmony by relying on cognitive interpretative tools that have produced the principle of relevance. Humans constantly subject themselves to processing their information to improve their cognitive efficiency, where memory uses new information with old information to deduce additional new information, and this relevance provides effort in processing information while achieving the greatest benefit expected from this processing (Sperber and Wilson, 2016). The principle of relevance is a cognitive perspective that studies the process of communication, describing it as an ostensive-inferential process that requires the availability of the optimal relevance condition. Communication is a process that combines ostension (the process of modifying the physical environment) and inference (the process of perceiving purposes through ostension) simultaneously (Sperber and Wilson, 2016).

Results: The analysis of the studied text led to an interpretative understanding that connects the figurative flashes in the carefully crafted examples of the poetry of Bishr ibn Bard. It invoked the collective space and directed it towards two semantic focal points: femininity and the associated meanings of imagination and dreamy worlds, and the lived reality and the resulting frustration and helplessness. Metaphor played its role, leading to the harmony of duality: disclosure and concealment, revealing the emergence of the creator's interaction with his environment in the collapse of what is wished to be in the face of what actually exists. This approach recommends broader, more comprehensive, and deeper interpretative readings for Arabic literature.

Conclusions: This applied study presented an interpretative demonstration revealing the role of figurative flashes in creating harmony and consistency in the studied text, the poetry of Bishr ibn Bard. It attempted to combine the first input space (Input1) and the second input space (Input2), deriving the blend result in the generic space, then clarifying the points of their intersection through selective projection in the blend space. The study concluded by summarizing the achieved metaphorical accomplishment of Bishr ibn Bard in two different sensory fields.