The Cognitive Interpretation Of Poetical Metaphor In A Dream Of Red Mansions

As a phenomenon of language, metaphor universally exists in human language and holds more and more attention in the field of linguistics. Traditional linguists believe that metaphor is a figure of speech with decorative function in discourse. With the emergence of cognitive linguistics, metaphor is not only viewed as an ornament, but also taken as a way of cognition. Thus, the study of metaphor can not only make people perceive the world better, but also benefit the comprehension of Classical Chinese Literature.A Dream of Red Mansions is one of the representatives of Classical Chinese Literature. The author, Cao Xueqin, applies such a technique that he inserts some poems between the lines, which form a connecting link between the preceding and the following text. These poems include a large number of metaphors. Some of them portray the personal features of the characters in the novel. Some hint the fates of the characters in the novel and some express the attitudes to love of the characters in the novel. The existence of these metaphors makes the content of the novel more colorful, makes the images in the poems more complex and makes the implicit meaning more deeply.With the use of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this thesis analyzes three sorts of poetical metaphors: poetical metaphors on the personal features of the characters, poetical metaphors on the fates of the characters and poetical metaphors on the attitudes to love of the characters, which is based on work mechanism of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, a cross-domain mapping from the source domain to the target domain. This thesis points out that poetical metaphors in A Dream of Red Mansions portray the personal features of the characters, hint the fates of the characters and express the attitudes to love of the characters. During these cross-mappings of the metaphors, the source domain is all the same, which is one of the characters in the novel, and the target domains are complex, which include the plant, the animal and natural landscape, etc. The source domains of these metaphors are restricted by the target domains and then selectively project those features on the personal features, the fates and the attitudes to love, which form the features on the personalities, the fates and the attitudes to love of the characters.This thesis believes that the poet constructs metaphors on the basis of similarity and relevance in experience when he encodes the artistic language of poems. This thesis also thinks that the comprehension of poetical metaphors is based on the finding of similarity, mapping and interaction. Meanwhile, metaphor is not only a cognitive way, but a cohesive device of the poetic discourse. Poetical metaphors in A Dream of Red Mansions makes the poems form a whole through metaphorical cohesive chain, which reflects the discourse function of poetical metaphors.This thesis discovers that the poems on the elements written by the characters in the novel contain the twice mappings. During these poems, the poet writes the elements by constructing metaphors, which the mappings of are called the first mapping. Moreover, the poem seems to express the element on the surface, but it actually is the portrayal of the poet, which forms the mapping between the element and the human. This is called the second mapping. Meanwhile, this paper finds that metaphorical cohesive chain in poems of A Dream of Red Mansions is more of a network link, where the source domain is the same whereas the target domains are complex. The twice mapping makes the cohesive function more salient and makes the decoders master the theme of the poems better, which are about the personal features, the fates and the attitudes to love of the characters.This thesis interprets poetical metaphors in A Dream of Red Mansions through Conceptual Metaphor Theory, which not only can put forward another new view for the comprehension of the poems, but also can provide a new way for the study of A Dream of Red Mansions.