Ancient China And Imagery Criticized The Methods Of Research

As one of literary critical methods of Chinese ancient literary theories , imagery criticism's function and position are very conspicuous. In the field of poem criticism ,critics chose some vivid, concrete and imaginative images to artistically analogize the whole features and meanings of the objects in order to awake readers'instinct impressions and literary experience which are peculiar and non-rational and of implicit poetic beauty during and after their reading .Though by now much reseach has been made on this method, there are more to be done. Besides, they are in different perspectives and terms already used are a little confusing. This article begins with the relation between words, Images and meanings. It tries to discover the causes of expressing meanings by using images and to find the beginning of"imagery analogy". It analyzes the causes of imagery criticism in the Chinese ancient literary theories by analyzing the concrete mode of thinking, the arts of going canvassing by the statesmen who were good at using analogy during the Warring States, comments on characters ,writings and drawings and so on. Finally,in order to study further, it also analyzes the types, forms and features of imagery criticism. This article emphasizes that the relation between images and meanings is the key to the forming of the concrete mode of thinking of imagery criticism. It embodies the features of ancestors'concrete mode of thinking by combining the images and meanings, mainly by using metaphor, simile and XING. They embody the features of Chinese imagery criticism both in the mode of thinking and expressing forms. Imagery criticism only existed in the Chinese literary theories, responding to the texts of Chinese poems.