An Examination Of Qian Zhongshu's Metaphor Study

Metaphor is one of the major interests in Qian Zhongshu's scholarship.Qian Zhongshu loves cross-cultural parallel study and interdisciplinary exploration,and his metaphor research also has the two dimensions.In his masterworks,Qian Zhongshu always demonstrate the commonalities between different languages and cultures by way of pointing out that they share some important or interesting metaphors.He also explore issues about poetic,philosophy,religion,art,psychology through the study of their metaphors.As an astonishing erudite scholar,Qian Zhongshu always take ideas from westerners to illuminate some important problems in his own tradition.We can also study Qian Zhongshu himself in this way.Thus,in the light of the most influential contemporary theory about metaphor-that is,Conceptual Metaphor Theory(CMT)first proposed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their great book Metaphors We Live By-we can see Qian Zhongshu's metaphor study afresh,and understand his many arguments more deeper than ever.And-it sounds fantastic-Qian Zhongshu quoted the book Metaphors We Live By for several times.This fact supports our position.In addition,Conceptual Metaphor Theory also touches upon many disciplinary such as poetic,philosophy,religion,art,psychology,language comparison,cultural comparison.So,we can compare it with Qian Zhongshu's metaphor study in the full span.Qian Zhongshu's metaphor study is illuminating but fragmentary.In contrast,Lakoff s theory is systematic.Taking Lakoff's theory as a frame of reference,we can discover many implicit relations between Qian Zhongshu's fragmentary arguments and reveal the latent systematicity in Qian's scholarship.And,since Qian Zhongshu's characterization and explanation of metaphor doesn't overlap completely with that of George Lakoff,we will try to integrate their ideas.It may be an interesting"conceptual blending"-to use Gilles Fauconnier's famous word-and it will shed new lights into our understanding of metaphor.The final goal of this thesis is to increase our understanding of Qian Zhongshu's scholarship and to deepen our comprehension about those big questions favored by him such as language comparison,cultural comparison,disciplinary integration etc.,through mutual illumination between his metaphor study and Conceptual Metaphor Theory.