A Study Of Precursors In "The Book Of Songs"

With its unique artistic charm and abundant cultural connotation,The Book of Songs has continuously gained wide attractions from scholars of every dynasty to study and unscramble since its debut.As the representative work of Chinese poetry in early times,countless researches has been made on the imagery in it,whilst few of them have been focused on prefigurative imageries and images.Under such circumstances,this paper will emphasize on discussing the prfigurative effect of the imageries and images in The Book of Songs.By categorizing imageries and images of prefigurative effects,and analyzing the prefigures of imageries and images with the reference of ancient books and records before Qin Dynasty,the regularity of them will be discussed as follows.In addition to the introduction and conclusion,the thesis is devided into three chapters.Chapter 1: Definition and identification of prefigurative imageries and images.The prefiguratic imageries mentioned in this paper means the natural or social incipient phenomenon that can forebode the development process or final results of things.It was based on prefiguratic belief of the Remote Age,and it was mainly made up by prefiguratic superstition and divination.Prefiguratic belief has gradually become a mutual kind of cultural and psychological recognition that all the people of Remote Age had,and part of it has progressively transformed into the prosperous sign and the predict of calamity that served for ruling class along with the reinforce of the crown.What distinguish it from usual image is that prefiguratic imageries have the significance of prediction itself and also has obvious logical relation with the content and emotion of the poetry.Chapter 2: Prefigurative imageries and images in The Book of Songs.This chapter divides prefiguratic imageries into four types,the first kind is prefiguratic imageries of birds.The flying,cease,warble of birds always suggest that characters in poem are away from home or at service,and it usually reflects the life of marriage or family when birds build nests.The second kind is prefiguratic imageries of weather,people regard abnormal phenomenon as the prediction of climate change.The third kind is divination.Divination is the most common behavior of taking the initiative to explore the development process and final results,The Book of Songs has described a lot of divination,bur only two poems about divination in dream have concrete image description,they are《xiaoya.sigan》and《xiaoya.wuyang》.The fourth kind concludes prosperous sign which has the attribute of lucky hint itself and some prefiguratic customs that have been passing down to now.Chapter 3: Literary meaning of prefigurative imageries and images in The Book of Songs.Prefigurative imageries have grown to be the images that have immovable meaning as well as permanent emotion and are commonly acceptable for the people of the Remote Age through long-term development of social productive life.Therefore when a poem employs prefigurative imageries in description,it can promote emotional expression and can strengthen the initiative of the poem on one hand,on the other hand,it can always arouse the imagination of readers and make it easy for them to interpret the emotion of the poem.The prefugrative imageries and images in The Book of Songs not only have great influence on the poetry creation of later times,but also that many prefigurative imageries and images have developed as the common psychological cognition of people until now.