A Cognitive Account Of The Tang Poem Chun Jiang Hua Yue Ye Based On The Metaphor-Icon Links Model

With the rapid development of cognitive science, especially cognitive linguistics, literary studies have taken the cognitive turn since 20 th century. The cognitive turn of literary studies has accelerated the emergence of cognitive poetics. Cognitive poetics applies the principles of cognitive science to the interpretation of literary texts, which offers a new approach to poetry interpretation and evaluation.Cognitive linguistics provides cognitive poetics with a variety of methodological tools,including metaphor and iconicity. However, as the two important fields of study in cognitive linguistics, metaphor and iconicity have been taken as independent linguistic phenomena.Masako K. Hiraga takes the lead in bringing metaphor and iconicity within the same framework for study. As proposed by Hiraga(2005), metaphor and iconicity entail each other within the same cognitive model which she calls “metaphor-icon links”. And she further proposes that the metaphor-icon links model is particularly tailored to the account of poetic texts, which is of significance in exploring the dynamic creation of meanings in poetic texts. Taking the classical poem Chun Jiang Hua Yue Ye of the Tang Dynasty as a case study, this thesis attempts to investigate how the metaphor-icon links model can be employed to account for the poem so as to prove that the model can serve as an explanatory tool for the appreciation of classical Chinese poetry.This thesis firstly introduces Hiraga’s cognitive model of the metaphor-icon links, including its definitions and mechanisms, and then applies the model to the thematic analyses of the Tang poem Chun Jiang Hua Yue Ye,and thus further proves the explanatory power of the model for classical Chinese poetry.Based on the above research, the thesis comes up with the following findings: Firstly, the abundant metaphors used in the poem Chun Jiang Hua Yue, including both local metaphors and global metaphors, are a result of the poet’s sad emotions processed and developed on the cognitive plane. Secondly, the poem’s textual structure as a blended form combining the natural setting and human beings’ feelings, aims at evoking the feelings of sadness, which corresponds to the metaphorical meanings of the poem. Thirdly, Hiraga’s cognitive model serves as an effective instrument for interpreting the poem Chun Jiang Hua Yue, which is a proof that the metaphor-icon links model proposed by Hiraga offers an analytical tool for interpreting the classical Chinese poetry. Lastly, different from the traditional influential views on the theme of the poem, such as Wen Yiduo’s “cosmic awareness” and Li Zehou’s “life philosophy”, which both advocate that the poem evokes no such feeling as sadness, the author holds, by adopting a cognitive method, especially Hiraga’s metaphor-icon links model, that it is just sadness thatserves as the very soul and subject of the great poem.