| As one of the 20th-century English novelists and playwrights, John Galsworthy was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1932 “for his distinguished art of narration which takes its highest form in The Forsyte Saga”. Most researchers of China focus their studies on Galsworthy’s novels, especially on The Forsyte Saga, with scant attention to his short stories, of which he is also a master. So this thesis chooses one of his best short stories—— The Apple Tree as the object of study. Up to now, the researches on The Apple Tree mainly concentrate on the causes of the tragedy, the mythical archetype of the story, the symbolic meanings of animals and plants, etc. Few of the researchers devote their effort to the thinking modes of both the writer and the reader when creating and interpreting the narrative. So this thesis intends to make up this deficiency from the perspective of conceptual metonymy.With the studies on cognitive science go deeper, more and more researchers have come to realize that metonymy is not only a kind of rhetoric device, but also a kind of thinking mode and cognitive process widely and commonly used among people. And a number of scholars have come to notice the important roles of metonymic thinking in narrative. This metonymic thinking in narrative is dynamic, including two aspects of the writer’s construction and the reader’s interpretation. The construction is the prerequisite of the existence of narrative, and the source and foundation of narrative. The interpretation is also an important procedure of narrative, and without this procedure, narrative can’t be narrative. So the study of metonymic thinking in narrative not only involves the writer’s construction, but also involves the reader’s interpretation. Just because of the same thinking mode shared by the writer and the reader, their communication through the narrative can be possible.This thesis intends to focus its study on the metonymic thinking in the writer’s construction as well as the reader’s interpretation of the narrative and the functions metonymic thinking plays in the narrative. Through this kind of analysis, it is hoped that the importance of metonymic thinking in the achievement of narrative communication will be revealed. And it will point out that there is a common cognitive foundation of conceptual metonymy in the writer’s construction and the reader’s interpretation. Metonymic construction of the narrative involves the events, settings, characters and quotations, etc., pointing out that metonymic thinking is the cognitive foundation of narrative focus; Metonymic interpretation of the narrative involves the image of main characters, philosophical meanings, the themes of the narrative, etc., pointing out that the metonymic thinking is the cognitive foundation of the diversity of the interpretation. Based on the author’s construction and the reader’s interpretation, this thesis will offer the functions of conceptual metonymy in narrative construction and interpretation, including subtext function, meta-narrative function and recontextualization function. |
