Transformation and Interpretation of Gender Concepts in Metaphysical Dimension: From Contemplative Worldview to Transpersonal Experience

Abstract

Purpose of the study: Verbalization of concepts in the artistic dimension is of great significance in the study of the metaphysical view of the world. This study is undertaken to identify and describe the principal ways of transformation and interpretation of verbalized concepts with gender features, in particular the concept of WOMAN, in the poetic discourse of the Metaphysicals.
 Methodology: It is based on the combination of research strategies of an interdisciplinary approach with the methods of interpretive, linguistic-stylistic, hermeneutic, and imagological analysis. Adopting the methods of interpretive analysis of literary writings in the gender dimension allows us to greatly broaden the applicable scope of them.
 Main findings: Gender concepts analysis based on the seventeenth-century English metaphysical poetry can be of great importance since the functioning and transformation of the sphere of concepts are complicated by metaphorical, symbolic, and linguistic ambivalence – an essential element of artistic practices of the Metaphysicals. Verbalization of the concepts of MAN and WOMAN actualise a particular way of transforming and conveying the basic features of the conceptual system of gender through the lens of dialectical thinking.
 Application of the study: The analysis of gender concepts in poetry appears to be an embranchment of relevant and influential gender studies contributing to such fields of humanities as literary studies, linguistics, and philosophy, cultural and religious studies. This emphasizes an interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary approach.
 Novelty/Originality: The means of interpretive analysis help achieve objectification of the gender sphere of concepts in the metaphysical dimension that becomes a crucial means of representation of the linguistic worldview. Since the verbalization of gender concepts and gender considerations in the poetry of the Metaphysicals, and especially in John Donne's, is not always explicit, the study of them at the imagery level allows revealing even implicit concepts, in particular gender ones, arising from mental activity, spiritual life, and transpersonal experience. In metaphysical poetry, the word is considered a means of contemplating reality and transcending beyond it.