The Study Of Imagery Translation In Shakespeare’s Plays From The Perspective Of Cognitive Linguisitcs

Imagery is a major element in literature,which has been studied in rhetoric,psychology and other fields.Different studies have distinctive focuses on imagery.Briefly,it can be understood as the author using concrete objects to express abstract feelings and thoughts.In cognitive linguistics,more and more scholars think the formation of imagery in our mind is based on our way of thinking,namely,the metaphorical way of thinking.We are understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.Metaphorical thinking is expressed in the way of imagery and imagery can be a cognitive instrument.Different nations have unique cognition and use imagery differently.This thesis studies the imagery translation in King Lear,which is abundant with imagery from the perspective of cognitive linguistics.The objectives of this research are to classify the imagery in King Lear according to Spurgeon’s study,to figure out the features of imagery used by different figures in King Lear,to analyze the translation methods adopted by five different translators from the perspective of cognitive linguistics,and to see whether the cognitive feeling of imagery in King Lear is translated explicitly or implicitly in different versions.This study not only focuses on the classical translations of King Lear by Zhu Shenghao and Fang Ping,but also on some newly published ones by Peng Jingxi,Fu Guangming and Xu Yuanchong published in 2015,2019 and 2021 respectively.The author first classifies the imagery in King Lear as animal imagery,daily life imagery,nature imagery and arts imagery based on Spurgeon’s study.Among them,animal imagery covers the largest proportion.The dominant imagery in King Lear is animal.Large animals are usually used to refer to his two elder cruel daughters while some small,weak and low animals are often used to refer to the servant with lower social status.These animals can be a tool to reflect human beings’ nature.Second,imagery used by different characters has their own features.The imagery used by the Fool is to indicate the power and the foolishness of Lear.Lear used imagery the most frequently.He is good at using animal imagery to describe his daughters.Third,the majority of imagery is translated literally and next to it is paraphrase.Annotation,as a kind of translation compensation,is used most frequently in Fu’s version.Fourth,the cognitive feeling of imagery is implicit in Zhu’s version and it is explicit in Fu’s version.This study focuses on the imagery translation from the perspective of cognitive linguistics,which is different from the previous studies.Besides,the newly published translations of King Lear are also studied in this thesis.In the future,the translation of Shakespeare’s plays should be studied more profoundly with new research findings of Shakespeare.