| The figure-ground theory is derived from psychology,based on the principle of prominence which is currently widely used in the field of cognition.The theory was first proposed by the Danish psychologist Edgar John Rubin in 1915.Since then,other psychologists have used it to study perception and describe the spatial organization modes.The figure-ground theory breaks through the traditional morphological method in linguistic research,and turns to the exploration based on human cognitive psychology,thus it has an important guiding role in poetry appreciation.With lucid language,imagist poetry is usually short,concise and unpretentious,which is a counterbalance to the romantic poetry.Hilda Doolittle is one of the greatest female poets in the United States in the 20th century.Her poems are full of the imagery superposition and are known as perfect imagist poetry.The novel and unique imagery superposition demonstrates ever-lasting charm and artistic appeal in Doolittle’s poems,which is why she is regarded as an outstanding representative of imagist poetry.Therefore,the present study aims to discover the rich imagery representations in Doolittle’s poems by analyzing the relationship between the figure and the ground of her poems and it aims to indicate that the figure-ground theory is an effective means to analyze the imagery representations in the imagist poetry as well.This present thesis focuses on the following three aspects:firstly,it elaborates the origin,development process,core elements of the figure-ground theory and the relationship between the figure-ground theory and imagist poetry.Secondly,based on the figure-ground theory,it analyzes the relationship between figure and ground in Do little’s poems in order to appreciate and interpret the imagery representations from spatio-temporal,synaesthetic,and aesthetic levels.Finally,it proves the explanatory power of the figure-ground theory on the imagery representations of imagist poetry through concrete examples.Based on the figure-ground theory,the present study has two values:on the one hand,it is conducive to deepening the understanding of the theme of poetry by grasping the imagery of poetry to deeply understand the artistic conception of poetry.On the other hand,it is helpful to expand its theoretical application by applying the figure-ground theory to poetry appreciation and cognition. |
