Interaction Between Art And Thought:A Study Of The Meaning-regeneration Mechanism In Tolstoy's Novels

This dissertation is an interdisciplinary semiotic research in the general program of foreign linguistics and applied linguistics.From the perspective of Lotman's cultural semiotics,which focuses on the study of literary texts,it interprets Tolstoy's novels.By analyzing the unique mechanisms of meaning-regeneration in these novels,this dissertation attempts a semiotics-based interpretive route for the criticism of classic literature.By adopting some theories in the cultural semiotic theories of Yuri Lotman(1922-1993),such as "heterogeneity","crossing boundaries","dialogue mechanism","space-time outlook" and so on,this dissertation chooses three representative novels of Leo Tolstoy(1828-1910),War and Peace,Anna Karenina,Resurrection,as the subject matters to carry out a progressive exploration of their meaning-regenerating mechanism.Leo Tolstoy's literary creation has always been an important research topic in the field of foreign literature research in China.And Tolstoy is also known as a great realistic writer in the19 th century.His literary works are regarded as "the most sensible realism".However,it is difficult to interpret the contradiction between this great writer's literary creation and his religious thoughts.His religious thoughts are often considered to hinder his artistic creation.In fact,religion not only enriches the spiritual world of Tolstoy's artistic creation,but also plays an active role in the literary genres and literary expressing forms.Only by integrating Tolstoy's literary creation with his spiritual exploration of religious thoughts and by exploring the internal mechanism of his literary works,can we have a real and comprehensive understanding of Tolstoy's literature and art.The dissertation is divided into seven parts: in the introduction,a brief overview of Lotman's theory of cultural semiotics as a methodology and its significance and value in the study of Tolstoy's "contradiction between literary creation and worldview" is presented.In the first chapter,the literature review section provides a detailed overview of the development of Tolstoy studies from different perspectives in domestic and foreign academia,showing a "pluralistic coexistence"trend.The second chapter aims to explore Tolstoy's spiritual journey during his writing period of War and Peace.It also reveals the mechanism of meaning-regeneration that is formed by the dialogue between reality and spirit in the novel.Tolstoy equated the ideal of man's oneness with God with the realization of the "natural good." This makes the literary text record the historical life of "war" and "peace" on the surface.Still,at a deeper level,it shows the psychological activities of the characters who are baptized by religious thoughts and move toward natural harmony.As a result,the novel has formed a unique form of dialogue in which life and mind are interwoven,and a mechanism of meaning regeneration in the novel's double-layer narration.The third chapter aims to explore that during the writing period of Anna Karenina,Tolstoy interprets God as love and the highest good,and that to be one with God is to be one with "love”.On this basis,it reveals the unique mechanism of meaning regeneration in the novel,that is,a web-like structure,woven from the binary opposition to identical fusion and from the periphery to the center.The fourth chapter aims to explore the close relationship between Tolstoy's religious thought and literary creation in his twilight years.From the spiritual nature of human beings,Tolstoy puts forward the "salvific ideas" of fraternity,respect,patience,and salvation.Echoing this,in the novel Resurrection,the writer constructs three finite spatial levels of "reality," "God,"and "self," and uses them to express a multidimensional and infinite world,highlighting the spatial simulation mechanism of artistic texts.In the fifth chapter,this dissertation adopts Lotman's theory of semiosphere to comb through the vicissitudes in Tolstoy's life and literary creation.The dissertation sorts out Tolstoy's rich life experiences and the journey of his writing novels,showing that he kept crossing the semispheric boundaries from the center to the edge of the symbolic circle and from the edge to the center again.This lays the foundation for the formation of the unique thoughts and artistic qualities of the Tolstoy's novels.The concluding part of the dissertation points out that the transmutation of the "human-God relationship" in Tolstoy's religious thought has directly led to the different forms of the mechanisms of meaning-regeneration in the three novels.At the same time,it summarizes the content of the whole dissertation and points out some recommendations for further study.To sum up,this dissertation adopts theory of Lotman's cultural semiotics to study Tolstoy's literary creations,making reference to and comparing Tolstoy's thoughts and literary creations in different periods,revealing their differences and similarities in the mechanisms of meaning regeneration.By combining Lotman's theoretical constructs with Tolstoy's literary and artistic practices,it deepens the understanding of Lotman's theory of cultural semiotics as well as the knowledge of Tolstoy's literary creation,especially the interpretation of the contradiction between literary creation and worldview,and provides a worthy reference for the interpretation of literary classics in China's literary criticism.