Study On Paul Ricoeur's Poetics Thoughts

Paul Ricoeur is a distinguished thinker and philosopher of French at 20th century.In the course of his career he has written extensively on a broad range of issues.The Mainland and Taiwan's academic research on Paul Ricoeur focused on his thoughts of philosophy,especially his theory of hermeneutics, metaphor and ethics.The study on Paul Ricoeur's theory of literature and art is lagging behind,several graduate theses involving Ricoeur's thoughts are only analysis of his theory of text or metaphor,and they are lack of systematic and in-depth research.The main purpose of this thesis is to give a panoramic displaying on Ricoeur's Poetics thoughts at the base of reading and understanding Ricoeur's important original works in detail and tries to make a dialectical evaluation,hoping this modest effort will help us to know Ricoeur's thoughts and give inspiration for the development of literary and artistic discipline.This thesis follows Ricoeur's academic footsteps and analyzes its meaning and signification by these methods mainly:first,read Ricoeur's works carefully;second,comparative method,this thesis studies dialogue or a collision that Ricoeur's poetics thoughts with other scholars and schools, showing the unique charm of Ricoeur's thought by comparison;third, analyzing keywords,in order to grasp Ricoeur's poetics thoughts conveniently and clearly,it lists systematically many terms that can reflect Ricoeur's poetics thoughts centrally,such as:distanciation,appropriation,threefold mimesis,the fictive experience of time,and so on.This thesis is divided into five parts.From the second part to the fourth part is the main body.The first part is the introduction.In this section,mainly introduce the state of researching Ricoeur's thoughts at home and abroad,and the research value and methods in this thesis.The reasons we chose Ricoeur as object of study are three aspects under consideration,that is,the vitality of hermeneutic theory,the importance of metaphor and the value of narrative.ChapterⅠis overview of Ricoeur's poetics thoughts.This part focuses on describing the development course and characteristics of Ricoeur's academic thoughts.Husserl's phenomenology is the base for Ricoeur.Ricoeur's academic thoughts are broadly divided into three stages:First,the stage of the philosophy of the will.Ricoeur took Husserl's description phenomenology as the main method to explore the will and action as people's basic survival power.Second,the stage of the phenomenological hermeneutics.Ricoeur paid attention to Freud's unconscious activity,and grafted hermeneutics onto phenomenology by degrees and in a roundabout way.Third,the stage of the "poetics".In The Rule of Metaphor and Time and Narrative,Ricoeur considered the problem of language creativity at semantics level and plot level. This stage is a more independent and more creative period for Ricoeur,whose poetics thoughts also are embodied in this stage.In addition,this chapter also analyzes three characteristics of Ricoeur's Poetics thoughts:First,semantics and reflection as an intermediary.This thesis analyzes the effort and the meaning of Ricoeur's thoughts by investigating the course of western hermeneutic.Ricoeur thought Heidegger made hermeneutic turn to ontology,but his path is the "short route" for lack of methodology analysis.Ricoeur combined ontology,epistemology with methodology by the detour of semantics and reflection.Second,depended on the idea of "time".The important aspect,that is,reflection in Ricoeur's roundabout path must rely on the text to realize,there is a problem of time interval in this process.Especially,in the three-volume Time and Narrative, Ricoeur concentrated on time,and described or discussed it.Three is the methods of inclusive learning.Ricoeur not only borrowed and drew from,but also improved and developed phenomenology,psychoanalysis,structuralism, analytic philosophy,etc.It was an open and humble mind that created characteristics of Ricoeur's theories,that is,flexible and consistent,fairly elastic and inclusive.ChaptersⅡandⅢcompose Ricoeur's Poetics thoughts.In order to grasp Ricoeur's Poetics thoughts conveniently,this thesis divides Ricoeur's Poetics thoughts into the upper and lower parts relatively because of its richness. ChapterⅡanalyzes Ricoeur's the theory of the text.Ricoeur re-demarcated the field of hermeneutics by the concept of "text".This thesis uses the method of analyzing keywords to describe these terms of Ricoeur,such as "discourse", "distanciation" and "appropriation","text" and so on,and compares horizontally the transcendence that Ricoeur than Gadamer,and the collisions between Ricoeur and Structuralism in this part.Ricoeur's text is in fact "the text world".Ricoeur absorbed the structuralism characteristic that emphasis on the structure of the whole.Ricoeur noted that the text is constituted by the statement,created by the rules,which emphasizes the integrative and structural features of the text.The diversity of interpretation of the text,on the whole,was the so-called "the conflict of interpretation".The task of hermeneutic was twofold:not only to look for the inherent power that disposed of the text,but also find the capacity of the text to project itself. Ricoeur resolved Dilthey's problem,that is,the confrontation between "explanation and understanding".He thought "explanation" and "understanding" are essential components to "the hermeneutical arc".Ricoeur also criticized the characteristics of non-subject or non-history or non-living of the structuralism.In the part of Ricoeur's theory of the metaphor,this thesis first examines Ricoeur's studies on Freud.Ricoeur pointed out that Freud's psychoanalysis is a kind of "semantics of desire",and also is a network of desire and discourse and unconscious structure and a world of culture.Freud's "unconscious" mends and adds the reflection theory of phenomenology,so the self-reflection is no longer a reflection at direct awareness level in the process of hermeneutic,but a specific reflection by symbols.Ricoeur put Freud's psychoanalysis into the "archaeology of the subject",and considered this regression that from meaning to desire,indicating the possible transcendence that from reflection to existence.Second,this paper analyzes the relationship between symbol and metaphor.Many scholars focus on the "single" symbol,Ricoeur's vision is more open,he made a relation between symbols and hermeneutics,and explored the primary symbols of evil dynamically and correlation between them,as well as a deep relationship between the symbol and the will structure of human.Thus,the transition to philosophical hermeneutics was begun when Ricoeur passed from the statics to the dynamics of the mythical symbols." symbol gives rise to thought".In The Rule of Metaphor,Ricoeur carried out a thorough inspection on metaphor.Ricoeur believed that metaphor has the semantic innovation by destroying or twisting the literal meaning of words. Ricoeur gave ontological function to metaphor.He had focused on studying the "live" metaphor.The "live" metaphor forced conceptual thought to think more."Lively" expression was that which expressed existence as "alive".To understand the metaphor was to master the world which was created for us to live.Symbol and metaphor in Ricoeur were headed for being,however,they must have the distinction:metaphor only belonged to the surface semantics of symbol,and symbol had a dual structure with double intention because of the non-semantic features.Finally,this thesis analyzes Ricoeur's theory of the metaphor with different angles through three key words such as "mimesis", "resemblance","metaphorical truth".ChapterⅢis the lower part of Ricoeur's poetics thoughts,including the concept of tragedy and the theory of narrative time.Ricoeur considered the ancient Greek tragedy involved in the "essence of tragic",and he advocated: Without the dialectics of fate and freedom there will be no tragedy.Tragedy did not exist in the speculation,but in the "action".Ricoeur admitted that Hegel's "concept of conflict" was profound,but not in favor of his reconciliation of "Geist".To understanding the role of the tragedy,Ricoeur maintained that the tragic carried out the salvation by means of the chorus in a spectacle,in the vestments of poetry,and through the specific emotions of terror and pity.Deliverance was not outside the tragic,but "within" to it and that was the tragic knowledge—"Suffering for the sake of understanding". Catharsis became upgrade form for human nature.In addition,Ricoeur selected the tragedy of "Antigone" to guide the tragic unusual ethical teachings,the transition from catharsis to conviction consisted essentially in a meditation on the inevitable place of conflict in moral life.Ricoeur's concept of tragedy showed the openness.In relation to Ricoeur's theory of the narrative time,this thesis elaborates it by three sections.First section sets out the aporias of the experience of time in Augustine's Confessions and the theory of plot in Aristotle's Poetics.Ricoeur planned to unify the discordance of Augustine's spirit time with Aristotle's emplotment,to make up the lack of time in Augustine's theory of plot with Augustine's contemplation on time.SectionⅡfocuses on the analyzing the concepts of Ricoeur's "threefold mimesis".Prefiguration in practice areas (mimesisⅠ),configuration in the text(mimesisⅡ),refiguration in acceptation (mimesisⅢ) formed a healthy,spiral cycle.Ricoeur constituted the mediation between time and narrative by the "threefold mimesis".SectionⅢdiscusses in detail the configuration of time in fictional narrative.Initially focuses on the description of the identity of the narrative function.Ricoeur "broadened, deepened,enriched,and opened up" the notion of emplotment,handed down by the Aristotelian tradition,and demonstrated the non-temporal feature of the deep structures of narrative and the "fictional" characteristics of the narrative time from many aspects such as utterance,tense,the time of narrating and narrated time,point of view,voice,etc.Ricoeur also used Mrs Dalloway, Magic Mountain,Remembrance of Things Past,vividly demonstrated the characteristics of the fictive experience of time.Fictional narrative made time to extend and expanded the changing arc of imagination.Ricoeur attempted to use the fictive time of narrative to resolve the aporias of time,but such solution was "incomplete". ChapterⅣmainly studies Ricoeur thoughts in the context of the history of literary theory.Thesis analysis Ricoeur's historical contributions from four aspects:first,Ricoeur rightly estimated the text position in the process to explain the meaning,Ricoeur's theory of "the world of text" was out of the closure of the structuralism,and avoided "signifier" floating of de-structuralism,but also corrected the bias of the theory of acceptance; second,Ricoeur's metaphor theory has expanded the field of metaphor research,and deepen our understanding of literary language,the language expression was a way of existence which we were "being-in-the-world";third, Ricoeur's concept of tragedy has highlighted the existence of the person; fourth,Ricoeur's theory of the narrative time opened up new dimensions of time experience.Finally,the paper also points out the limitations of Ricoeur's poetics thoughts:he ignored the meaning of the text of the social and historical factors;in the road of turning to existence from taking language as tool,Ricoeur overall emphasized on the language of the tool and the construction of the text;not fully aware of the reader's role when interpreting the text,ignored text's commercial features in the modern society.In addition, this thesis is also based on the perspective of Chinese to recognize Ricoeur's poetics thought.This thesis briefly introduced the spread of Ricoeur's poetics thoughts in the field of literary and art study,based on the Chinese perspective to examine Ricoeur's poetics thoughts,and compares the "Xing" and "insinuation" with Ricoeur's metaphor,also analyzes difference between the Western time and Chinese time.When Ricoeur constructed his poetics thoughts,he gave our literary theory model signification through his transforming the western canon,analyzing the specific texts,and the dialectical studying methods.