Allegory Study Of "Cat City"

A Tale of Cat City is a very special piece of Lao She's literature works. What is so unusual about this piece of writing is that it was the first time ever he used the allegorical way of writing to depict the ups and downs a fictional country on Mars. The written text seems to focus on painting an "exotic" picture of what a human being from Earth saw, heard and felt during his stay in the "cat city". In fact, it cryptically aims to express the author's meditation on the contemporary events that happened in "his own country on Earth" and his worries and concerns towards the times in which he lived. Based on very intensive reading, this paper attempts to analyze A Tale of Cat City from a fabular point of view by employing "theories of allegory" as a major research method and to dig out the unique and profound allegorical characteristics and meanings of the text. It also strives to achieve a relatively fresh and deep interpretation of A Tale of Cat City. This paper is divided into four chapters:1. The first chapter is an introduction section, including the current disquisitions on A Tale of Cat City at home and abroad and the loose organization and definition of "theories of allegory". In this thesis, "fable" is a literary expression, an art technique and a rhetoric instrument composed of fiction, irony and metaphor etc., serving to display the inner nature.2. The second chapter is mainly to analyze A Tale of Cat City in great details in which Lao She made up a role of an "outsider" observing the "cat city" through the eyes of "self" and presented a panoramic view of the chaotic conditions of "alien cat". The chapter reflects the author's awareness of sarcasm and serious pondering over the eventful China in his times by lavishly elaborating on three aspects:i.e. perspective of "self, panoramic interpretation and consciousness of allegory dotted with sarcasm.3. Chapter three is devoted to deeply studying the most essential fabular characteristics of A Tale of Cat City. It intends to exhibit the two-tier ideographic trait of allegories, its "inconsistency" and the melancholy atmosphere.4. By utilizing the combination of the background of Lao She's times and his personal experiences, the fourth chapter features the exploration on the causes forming the allegorical streaks of A Tale of Cat City and the connotations behind the allegories, which are the predicative functions of parable, the redemptory specialties of fable and Lao She's utopian visions expressed in the text.