The Symptom Of Symptoms

Metaphor is an important way of thinking with which human kind express their ideas and knows the world. It is especially important in the activity of literary creation and reading because it makes the images unfamiliar which we have been accustomed to, makes the expressions more implicit, euphemistic and profound, makes the meaning of literature multiplex and uncertain, brings the literature more explanations. Disease is a concept in the field of medicine, but disease in literature is not only a concept of medicine; it is also a cross-domain mapping in the conceptual system. Diseases in modern Chinese fiction are inflections of culture and social problems of modern China. It is a general result that the Chinese intellectuals and novelists pondered on the society, culture and politic affairs of China systematically, so they diagnosed and treated China as a diseased body. They considered that modern Chinese history was composed of diseased bodies and diseased civilizations. The modernization progress of Chinese fiction becomes apparent thereby. So, to sort out disease as a metaphor in modern Chinese fiction may be helpful to us in the following aspects: to reconsider the value and the stage point of modern Chinese literature, to reconsider the intellectuals' social and historical responsibility, to reconsider the social value of literature works, to reveal how the fiction reflected the abuse of Chinese culture and political system, to reveal the intellectuals' responsibility on the society and culture, to reveal how the modern Chinese fiction embodied the...