Image Thought In Literary Theory:Review And Inquiry

This dissertation studies the image thought in literary theory. There two parts of the study, one reviews the history of debating with the image thought in modern China and the other inquiries image thought in eastern and western classical literary theory.Part one includes chapter 1 to 3. Chapter 1 traces the image thought concept back to the years before 1949. It was imported with the Russia literary theory during early 20 century. Some Chinese theorists took this concept with their own eyes. There are two discussions on image thought in modern Chinese literary theory history. Chapter 2 deals with the first discussion which lasting from later 50’s to early 60’s. The backgrounds of this discussion were the establishment of socialism literary theory system and a lager scale discussion about aesthetics. In the discussion, some supported the existing of image thought and others denied it. Although the former’s view was the main idea, but the discussion was end with the triumph of the latter’s because of the political ideology. Chapter 3 deals with the second discussion during later 70’s and early 80’s. The Reform and Open-up was the background of this discussion. The Image thought was accepted by most scholars, they promoted the view that aroused in the first discussion. As the discussion went deeper, many people realized that former view that focused in epistemology had defects,so some thought it from the practical view and some from the literary psychology and so on. Those discussions promoted the development of literary theory in contemporary China. After mid 80’s, as many western theories came in, the topic of study changed fast, this old fashion theory was out of talk. But the problems aroused by it were studied deeper in many ways.Chapter 4 is a transition. We study from the brain science, the cognitive science and the noctic science to demonstrate the existence of image thought. We define the image thought simply as a process of thought with image information. At present level of science, we do not know a lot about the nature and laws of image thought, but we can not deny it has laws that means it has its own logic which is not the same as in logical thought. On one hand this chapter solves the basic problem argued a lot during former discussions and on the other hand it offers the foundation for next two chapters that inquiry the image thought in eastern and western classical literary theory.Chapter 5 and 6,which respectively inquiry the image thought in eastern and western classical literary theory,consist the second part of this dissertation.At those two chapters,we implore some classical literary theory problem from the standpoint of image thought.We divide the process of image thought to fours sects——the philosophical basic of the image thought,the way of thinking of image thought,the expression form of the image thought and the horizon of interpretation of the image thought.We present that in Chinese classic literary theory,the philosophical basic of the image thought called Xiang-si-wei(象思维),which doesn’t differentiate subject and object.In this mode of thinking,the way image thought takes called Bi(比)and Xing(兴),which are two item used in classic poetic,they let the images move and transform between the human and universe.The expression form of the image thought is Yi-xiang(意象)that represent man is an integral part of nature.The horizon of interpretation of this Yi-xiang called Jing-jie(境界),its also an widely used item in Chinese language means high levels of mind or art.Relatively, the image thought in western classic literary theory has different versions. The western philosophy has a strong sense to divide subject and object. This is the basic of image thought. As the subject is more important the object, so the literary theory concerns the writer most. Writers’ special abilities are talked again and again and the first ability is imagination that is the way image thought takes. The expression form of the image thought is image. And there is a important horizon consisted by metaphor, symbol and myth that formed from Greece to nowadays in interpretation of image.