A Stylistic Study Of W.B. Yeats's Poems From The Functional And Cognitive Perspectives

As a unique genre of literature, poetry enjoys high prestige of artisticvalue and wide popularity in the literary field. And as a particular kind ofdiscourse, it is a matter of course that it has its own stylistic-analytical model.Comparing with the stylistic analysis for fiction and drama, the poetryanalyticalmodel is relatively mature and complete. However, the traditionalway to interpret and appreciate poems seemed to be confined in a relativelynarrow space in which the acute intuition plays an overwhelming role inpoem analysis, and therefore it is lack of scientific evidence. But afterwardsthrough the assiduous efforts of Halliday, Leech and other scholars,linguistics developed rapidly and stylistics gradually stepped into itsscientific track.So, in the thesis, in order to probe deep into the profound meanings andappreciate the designed beauty and overflowed originality in William ButlerYeats's poems, the writer attempts to adopt a more scientific analyzingmethod---the well-connected combination of the systemic-functional theoryand the cognitive theory. From the functional and cognitive perspectivesreaders can be guided to the deep thoughts, especially the social significancebehind the verse-lines. This thesis attempts to delve deep into the profoundconnotations of W. B. Yeats's classical poems and present the poet's uncanny of Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, Heroes of the Marshes ) areuntransla table, and if these works are translated they are also ruined.People who hold this opinion think that untransla tability is embodiedconcretely in those aspects: poems, styles, specia l rhetoric methodsand culture factors. People who think languages are untra nsla tableshow their caution and doubts to the sema ntics and cultural thoughtsin the course of"language transition", that is to say, they worry anddoubt whether the transla tion can successful complete the languagetransition work and faithfully express the thoughts and ideas indifferent cultures. Actually they place transla tion in an absolutizationfield.However, nowadays transla tion is not only the simple"languagetransition", but also the transformation of the"culturalcommunication","traditiona l conversation"and"thinkingcommunication", etc. It has become a fact that translators meet newobstructions and are mired in new difficulties continuously.One of the most commonly seen difficulty in transla tion practiceis cultural loss, which needs to be offset by various strategies ofcultural compensa tion in order to enable the target readers toappreciate the foreign culture to the same extent as the source readersdo. The reason to sustain the necessity of discussing culturalcompensa tion is that transla tion has become an importa nt means oftransmitting culture more than ever. While resorting to different waysof cultural compensa tion, translators should abide by three principles,namely, (1) cultural equiva lence; (2) intelligibility and acceptability; fourth chapter gives an elaboration of metaphor in the poetic creation. In thispart, verses are analyzed about metaphor in Yeats's poems from theperspectives of rhyme, meter, and some phonemic patterns. In the conclusion,the writer gives a sum-up about what the writer has done in this thesis, andpoints out that there is still room for the further study.