Literary Creativity and Cognitive Linguistics: Measuring the Esthetic Value of the Poem "The Paper Boat" by Garoos Abdolmalekian within the Framework of The Conceptual Blending Theory

The Poems written by Garoos Abdolmalekian have been among successful Blank-Verse Persian poetry over the last two decades – selling well and numerous reprints testify to this claim, as well as recent translations of his poetry selections into English, French, Swedish, Arabic, Turkish and Kurdish. By employing the Conceptual Blending Theory proposed by Fauconnier and Turner (2002) and the conceptual means it provides for analyzing creative literary texts, the present work, with a hint at the theories of the nature of poetry, aims at a scientific, systematic investigation of the reasons lying behind this success. What comes through this process reveals that Abdolmalekian's work, owing to his use of novel imagery in his poems, enjoys a high degree of literary creativity, and consequently a high esthetic value. Analyzed in terms of the Conceptual Blending Theory, these images are resultant from an employment of hyperblends and double-scope integration networks as well as a rich variety of vital relationships. Moreover, observance of the governing or optimality principles in setting up blends and integration networks, which makes his poems, while having a high creativity degree, not deter his readers from approaching his poetry, thus contributing to the esthetic appeal of his work, which has a share in hid overall literary success.