A Cognitive Study On The Literariness Of Chinese Menglong Poetry

This dissertation begins with an endeavor to locate and accentuate problems in terms of methodology and ontology concerning the existing studies on Chinese Menglong Poetry,followed by a straightforward proposal that the key question of the study of Chinese Menglong Poetry should be its literariness and that a desirable research paradigm should be an interdisciplinary initiative binding perspectives and approaches of literary studies and of cognitive linguistics.On the basis of this proposal,this dissertation revisits the definition of literariness and points out that it should be appropriately interpreted as a continuum of the literary language,the characteristics or procedures of conceptualization underlying the very language and the philosophical implications based upon the very conceptualization.Accordingly,this dissertation proceeds in a language-conceptualization-philosophy fashion.More specifically,our attention goes to four dominant language features of Chinese Menglong Poetry as a whole,namely,a frequent use of the first-person pronoun “I”,an inclination of“boundedness” in the use of nouns,verbs as well as adjectives in association with SV constructions,a recurring pattern in the use of embodied rhetorical devices that culminates in deliberate circularity,and a seemingly irrational collocation of words and/or phrases.All the four features,as the continuum of the literariness implies,are meticulously studied individually in four chapters in a bid for their respective characteristics/procedures of conceptualization that work beneath to be revealed.Furthermore,we link what has been gained on the level of conceptualization to a philosophical elaboration,coming up with new findings concerning how Chinese Menglong Poetry is ontologically,epistemologically and methodologically significant in its relation to philosophical questions such as who “I” am,what the world is like,how “I” am able to know what I know and how “I” get myself involved in the world.Our exploration leads us to the following conclusions: 1)the literariness of Chinese Menglong Poetry is not necessarily scattered in the areas of imagery,aesthetics,emotion and concerns for modernity as the previous studies have indicated or suggested,but is crystallized in a comparatively abstract and panoramic distinctive manifestation rooted in cognition and philosophical thoughts;2)the literariness of Chinese Menglong Poetry unveils a unique adventure of mind in search for a renewed understanding of the self,the world and the relations between the two,coupled with an experimental approach of the Menglong poets to rebuilding their views on life,the world and the value of life in the given social and cultural context pertinent to the commencement of the reform and opening-up of China;3)the literariness of Chinese Menglong Poetry suggests that it is advisable to pay more scholastic attention to the very genre of poems in the future studies of Chinese poetry as Chinese Menglong Poetry marks a transitional phase not only inheriting the long-standing poetic traditions but also ushering in new progress in terms of how Chinese poems are written.In the same way,the study of the literariness of Chinese Menglong Poetry also deserves more academic concerns as the study,as is indicated in this dissertation,goes beyond what has been done and is expected to achieve a new theoretical and practical high in the light of its interdisciplinary framework and language-conceptualization-philosophy paradigm.Besides,this dissertation is intended to voice the necessity and benefits of placing due emphasis on literary/poetic language itself,advocating a higher degree of motivated and refined pattern to analyze linguistic facts of poems before any convincing conclusions are possibly drawn.