The Study Of The Disease Metaphor In The Intellectual Novels Of The 1940s

Disease has formed a set of complex symbolic discourse system in human cognitive thinking,which has rich metaphorical connotations.Generally speaking,the physical damage and death threat caused by diseases are deviations from the normal state of life,so the metaphors mostly point to social,political,cultural,moral and other aspects of unreasonable.Disease metaphor plays an important role in modern Chinese ideology,culture and literature.Both the "sick man" self-metaphor in the late Qing Dynasty and the "National Character Criticism" in the May 4th Movement regarded China as a sick and diseased body.Therefore,Chinese modern writers and even modern intellectuals have established their cultural identity as "doctors" and the conscious consciousness of "enlightenment".The 1940 s was a special period.On the one hand,daily life,social order and moral ethics were thrown out of the norm by the long Anti-Japanese War,and on the other hand,the complicated and intense political situation between the old and the new.In this context of The Times,many images of intellectuals as "patients" appeared in novels written in the 1940 s,which meant that the identity of intellectuals as "cultural doctors" was questioned and even collapsed.This tendency in the development of disease metaphor in modern Chinese literature shows different characteristics from other periods.Disease has changed from personal life experience to the common and realistic survival predicament of intellectuals,and disease metaphor has also changed from the target description of social ills and national criticism in the May Fourth Period to the emotional expression and internal examination of intellectuals’ self-experience.In addition to the introduction and conclusion,this thesis is divided into three chapters.The introduction includes three aspects: the research background,the analysis of the research status and the purpose and significance of the research,which combs out the development of disease metaphor in history and culture and the important function and value of disease metaphor in literature.Through literature study,it is found that most of the academic researches on disease metaphor in modern Chinese literature focus on the period from the late Qing Dynasty to the May Fourth Movement,and the lack of integrated research on intellectual disease writing and metaphor in novels in the 1940 s.The first chapter mainly discusses the reasons for the large increase of diseased intellectuals in the novel creation from two aspects: the relationship between disease metaphor and modern Chinese literature and the real experience of poverty and illness of intellectuals in the war and exile in the 1940 s.The second chapter,starting from the specific text,explores the rich metaphorical connotation behind the writing of disease through the analysis of the physical state and spiritual temperament of the pathological intellectuals in the 1940 s novels,mainly from the social metaphor,political metaphor,cultural metaphor,psychological metaphor four aspects.The third chapter aims to analyze the cultural significance and value of the writing of the disease image of intellectuals in the 1940 s and the metaphor of disease in modern Chinese literature,and feel the spiritual collapse and reconstruction efforts of modern intellectuals in the complex social environment.And them how to stick to the spiritual position of modern intellectuals through disease writing and disease metaphor in the case of disharmony with the discourse of The Times.