Typical Image Of The Modern Chinese Women Poetry

Image is an important concept in both Chinese and foreign literary theories. Image criticism has gradually become one of the hottest topics in literary study since 1980s. In the field of female literature, however, it is still a relatively new topic to make text analysis from an image perspective and reveal the artistic uniqueness of female discourse. This doctoral thesis takes typical images in modern Chinese women's poems and prose as the research object, and tries to apply a variety of research methods including aesthetic criticism, psychoanalysis, gender criticism and myth- prototype criticism to discuss the gender experience, gender consciousness and gender conception concealed in the images. On the basis, the images in women's texts will show their aesthetic value on the aspects of ideological connotation and artistic form.This thesis includes seven parts.First, the introduction part explains the origin of this topic, defines the research scope and the research object, sorts out relative research results at home and abroad, and then elucidates the academic value, research methods and ideas of this thesis.Second, the body text consists of five chapters.In Chapter I, the concept of image in the poetics scope is defined and fundamental comprehension about image and its internal connection with gender is given. This thesis holds that image is aesthetic integration of subjective emotion and objective things, where the writers' aesthetic consciousness and other inner cultural awareness have penetrated. Shown in the form of discourse symbols in literary works, it is a key point full of aesthetic implication that can unify the form and content of works. Due to the impact of gender factor on literary creation, when the image formalizes the writers' experience, it will reveal gender consciousness of the aesthetic subjects with gender identity, and reflects cultural concepts of gender held by a certain epoch or people. That is why it is reasonable to study image from a gender perspective.From Chapter II to Chapter IV, a few images with typical meanings in women's poems and prose are chosen and concretely analyzed.Chapter II elucidates the multiple implications of the image "moon". In Chinese literary and cultural tradition, there is a mysterious relationship between moon and women, and "moon-women" gradually comes out as a prototype-symbol mode.The application of the image "moon" in women's writing reflects female writers' distinctive sense of life. The lyric subject's spirit of universal love full of religious feelings, loneliness and pathos triggered by traveling alone and hesitation, as well as sad experience of tough life, are all integrated with the object "moon". In addition, the female writers also apply the image "moon" to express their own life experience, and in the lyric process, they think about gender relations and the value of women's existence.Chapter III explains the aesthetic integration between the image "mirror" and women's existence. The image "mirror" is a prototype of individual existence. It contains the women's sensitive awareness of the past time and ever-changing life, as well as their reflection on the secular life of parent generation and women's destiny in different historical backgrounds. In such literary expressions as "taking mirror as wall" or "curling oneself in the mirror", the image "mirror" presents women's struggling life and lonely feelings. In the lyric mode "watching oneself in the mirror", the lyric subject evaluates the female identity and subjective personality, and think about society, life and themselves deeply by describing the ugly distorted image in the mirror.Chapter IV discusses aesthetic characteristics of the image "night" in women's versions. Since 1980s, "night" and women's hidden subconscious have been connected, which has changed the aesthetic of the image "night" dramatically. Female aesthetic subjects take the gender of "night" as a special writing strategy, which is aimed at creating a unique set of female discourse symbols different from the male discourse symbols. By creating the image "night", female writers describe women's sense of sufferings, hope of "saving the world" and their desire, and set up a discourse space that resists male-centered culture. Further, the image "night" reflects female writers' thoughts about the essence of people and the world, such as thinking of death, observation of internal darkness of humanistic world, as well as exploration into dimension of human existence.Chapter V reveals the artistic creation in the process of image formation. The combination and reappearance of feminine images show the lyric subjects' desire and emotion by dense image presentations. As material reflection of women's experience, these images present female aesthetic subjects' unique style to know themselves and the world, and reveal their writing initiative as discourse subjects. Women's subject awareness in image connotation display female writers' aesthetic value in image formation.Finally, the conclusion part summarizes the above study. Owing to the connotation of gender culture accumulated in literary and cultural tradition as well as the penetration of writers' gender awareness, the typical images in women's poems and prose show aesthetic characteristics full of gender sense. The images, such as "moon", "mirror" and "darkness", convey the aesthetic subjects' rich gender experience and life perception. They reflect female writers' gender consciousness and gender conception, and present women's writing style. In this sense, we can interpret the works further by studying female literature from an image perspective, and present uniqueness and richness of female literature.