An Analysis Of Theme Construction Of Runaway From The Perspective Of Image Schema

The text of this thesis is the short story collection Runaway,the masterpiece of Alice Munro,who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2013.Published in 2004,the book was well received and selected as New York Times' Best Book of the Year and Lire's Best Foreign Novel of the Year.Runaway consists of eight short stories--“Runaway”,“Chance”,“Soon”,“Silence”,“Passion”,“Trespasses”,“Tricks” and “Powers”.In these stories,Alice Munro depicts the runaways of women and explores the growth of them.At present,there are numerous studies about Alice Munro and her works.However,there are few studies which analyze the book Runaway and fewer studies are carried out with linguistics theories.Nevertheless,recently,with the development of cognitive linguistics and cognitive poetics,a great number of scholars have expounded and verified the effectiveness of linguistic theories on analyzing literary texts and started their study on this subject.To analyze the theme constructions of this book with a new approach,the thesis adopts image schema theory,one of the classic theories of cognitive linguistics,to study the content of Runaway and explore how the image schemas contribute to the theme constructions of this book.During the study,the thesis divides the stories of the book into three parts based on their pattern--feminist consciousness,independence and influence upon runaway.The thesis adopts seven image schemas,namely CONTAINER schema,FORCE schema,CENTER-PERIPHERY schema,PATH schema,LINK schema,BALANCE schema and PART-WHOLE schema to explore the theme constructions of the stories.The study finds out that image schemas play important roles in deepening the themes of the stories.CONTAINER schema,FORCE schema and CENTER-PERIPHERY schema depict the lives of female characters and emergence of their feminist consciousness;PATH schema and LINK schema represent the female characters' explorations for independence and BALANCE schema and PART-WHOLE schema illustrate the influence of runaways for female characters and reflections on relationships between men and women.With the proceeding of the seven image schemas above,Munro expresses her concerns about females and exploration on their mental world and inner thoughts.