A Study Of "Desire" In Pow From The Perspective Of Cognitive Narratology

Pow is one of the representative novels of Mo Yan and the previous researches about it are mainly conducted in four aspects: analysis of polyphonic narrative and carnival narrative based on traditional narratology,the influence of folk culture on this novel,Goldblatt's translating strategies as well as the human concern in this novel.Nowadays,few scholars have conducted their researches on Pow from the perspective of cognitive narratology.This thesis specifies the theme of Pow into the theme “desire” characterized by “orexis” and “libido”.It adopts the first-person internal focalization and the duet of experiencing-self and narrating-self proposed in Genette's focalization theory as well as four types of conceptual integration network in Fauconnier's conceptual integration theory as its theoretical foundation and conducts a corpus-based analysis on the theme “desire” from the perspective of cognitive narratology.First of all,corpus retrieval is used to analyze the theme of this novel and its main characters;then based on focalization theory,it probes into the main narrative focalizations and their narrative effects on the theme “desire” from the interaction between author and text;finally,based on conceptual integration theory,readers' constructions on some classical images related to the theme “desire” during reading are reproduced from the interaction between text and readers.The findings of this thesis are as follows: 1)Mo Yan employs the first-person narrating-self and experiencing-self internal focalization as well as children's focalization in his novel Pow.A picture about “orexis” and “libido” is presented for the readers by the protagonist Luo Xiaotong's narration.The duet of first-person narrating-self and experiencing-self works in shortening the distance between the writer and readers,making it possible to shift between different time and spaces,and finally increasing the authenticity and vividness of this novel;the application of children's focalization shapes a vivid contrast between the children's world and the adult's world,further deepening the theme “desire” in this novel;in addition,the pure and imaginative tone of children's focalization can make up for the limitations of the first-person internal focalization.2)Conceptual integration networks can be used to deconstruct the theme “desire”,among which mirror network,single-scope network and double-scope network have a higher frequency.In the process of construction,the cause-effect relation,part-whole relation,similarity relation and characteristic relation are compressed.With the background and cultural knowledge as well as colorful imagination,readers can finally achieve their own cognition experience about the text.