The Role of Musical Metaphors in Ch. Dickens’ Christmas Story “The Cricket on the Hearth”

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the role of musical metaphors in one of the most famous works of Charles Dickens “The Cricket on the Hearth”. As a result of linguistic analysis, the dominant metaphor “Sounds of a cricket – music” and secondary metaphors “Boiling kettle – music”, “The chime of the clock – music”, “The creak of the cart – music”, “People's voices – music” were singled out. According to the investigation such musical metaphors are distinguished by a diverse structure: original and trite, simple and two-layer, metaphors complicated by epithets and musical terminology are used. We believe that such metaphors make it possible to create a single monolith of fairy tale narration. The main metaphor “Cricket sounds – music” is built on the archetype and has a special symbolic meaning, conveying home comfort, family happiness, love and fidelity. Musical metaphorical images are opposed to the non-musical image of the evil Tackleton, who is trying to bring discord into the calm and happy life of the main characters. We believe that in this way Ch. Dickens exposes the ugliness of his soul.