A Comparative Study Of The Chinese And English Versions Of Mo Yan’s Life And Death Are Wearing Me Out From The Perspective Of Cognitive Narratology

At present, the interdisciplinary study which combines the new theories of cognitive narratology with the research of literary works has become a trend. Cognitive narratology mainly concerns the cognitive interaction between the author and the readers, and aims to answer the question of how narrative structure and technique make sense to readers. Schema theory developed from the Gestalt psychology provides a very good starting point for cognitive narratology to achieve this goal. During the reading process, only when readers connect the reading material with the schema existing in their brain can the interpretation go on and the reading material are meaningful. However, the same story may have different narrative effects told in different perspectives, and different narrative features will presuppose different cognitive models. In Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out, the complicated perspectives of Lan Qiansui and Lan Jiefang, Mo Yan, and the animals make up the story. In the real and magic plot, readers need to renew their cognitive structure, modify their reading position, and reconstruct their cognitive schema for the interpretation of the reading material.This thesis aims to apply Cook’s schema theory and the relevant resources of cognitive narratology to study the similarities and differences of the Chinese and English versions of Mo Yan’s Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out. The first chapter will introduce the background and significance of this study. Cognitive narratology has aroused great interest of scholars abroad and at home, and scholars realize that the process of narration is naturally readers’ mental activity to construct and interpret the story. Chapter Two gives a brief introduction to the development of cognitive narratology and its four research models, and previous studies about Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out abroad and at home will be presented, from which the author of this thesis finds that the analysis on the differences of different versions of a text from the perspective of cognitive narratology can rarely be found. Chapter Three focuses on the methodologies and theoretical framework of this thesis. Ideas of schema theory and relevant theories of cognitive narratology will be used to analyze the cognitive process of the readers, and the definition of schema and schema theory, and the classification of schema will be discussed. Chapter Four applies schema theory to analyze the narrative perspectives of the Chinese version, the transformation of the narratees caused by the change of the narrator, and readers’ reconstructing of their cognitive models. In Chapter Five, the similarities and differences of the narrative perspective in the Chinese and English versions and Goldblatt’s translation strategies to the narrative perspective are discussed, aiming to find out the different cognitive processes of Chinese and English readers. Cognitive process is a process of interaction between readers and writers at the cognitive level. Because of the cultural and social differences, Chinese readers and western readers have different cognitive strategies. Therefore, the translator needs to change the narrative perspective in his translation for the highest degree of the text’s acceptance in English-speaking countries.