A Study On Image Cohesion In Chinese And English Poetry

With the development of our country and more cultural communication between China and western countries, more and more western readers become interested in Chinese culture. The classical Chinese poetry as the gem of Chinese culture will be popular with western readers. Most of the poems pay more attention to the creation of image. There is one or more images in a poem and some of them are unrelated on the surface, but after reading the whole poem, you will find that the wonderful relevance will form between the images, and finally an integrated image forms. The cohesion of the poetic text is realized naturally.Succinct language is an advantage of the Chinese poetry which will leave the reader more imaginative space. After reading a poem, you can get an endless aftertaste. It will also bring a lot of difficulties when the classical Chinese poems are translated into English, because English is different from Chinese, it is a typical paratactic language and its structure is well-knit, and sentence elements have to be integrated with overt form signs. In fact, the English translation of the Chinese poetry contains a complex process. In the process, the implicit semantic relations (implicit semantic ties) need to be found out in source language and the implicit semantic ties need to be embodied in target language ,which inevitably concerns application of the textual cohesive devices.So the study of the cohesive function of the image and the image cohesion devices will deepen the study of the cohesion and coherence, and bring new angles for the mutual interpretation of the English and Chinese poetry, and make contributions to the cultural exchange between the west and China.Taking Chinese and English image poems as the study object, this thesis tries to demonstrate the image functions as a cohesive device from the following aspects: 1) Temporal Image and Spatial Image. From the reception psychology, when people filtrate and distinguish the new things, they usually firstly select the information expressing time and space definitely as the understanding foundation and form conception, then undertake the second and third information processes. The production of the poem is usually set in a certain temporal and spatial background which can form an image in the readers'mind, the sequence of the time and space can make the poetic text have a certain cohesive function. 2) Natural image. Different combinations of the images can create different artistic conceptions, so the cohesive function of the natural image will be demonstrated mainly from the following aspects: juxtaposition of images; multi-level combination of images; image permeation; one central image. 3) Social image. According to the topics selected frequently by the poet, the thesis divides it into: pastoral life; battle scene; lovesick life; parting scene, the social image can unite all the parts of the poem together and form an integrated picture, thus realizing the cohesion of the poetic text. 4) Combination of synaesthesia images. Because the senses interact and run-through each other and form a thinking network, they can realize the cohesion of the text.Through the contrast, we find that the cohesion of the English image poems is mostly realized by the overt cohesive devices, for example, the use of the conjunctions, and the cohesive function of the image is not so obvious because English is after all a hypotactic language. Chinese is a paratactic language, so the overt cohesive devices (mentioned by Halliday) seldom appear in Chinese poems, the cohesion of the poem is realized mostly by the image. But as for the image poems without conjunctions or in the form of incomplete sentences, they can still be considered as coherent texts and understood by western readers, which also shows the image has the cohesive function, because the sequence, structuredness, integrity and organization characterize the cognition (赵艳芳, 2001). In fact, the image makes use of these features to make the unrelated sentences on the surface to be reorganized in the readers'mind, and the coherence of the poem is realized. Finally the conclusion is drawn that the image has the function of cohesion, and the outer space of the image realizes the cohesion of the poetic text, and the inner space of the image realizes its coherence.Through the contrast between the two versions of Tune to"Sand and Sky"---Autumn Thoughts by Ma Zhiyuan and the contrast between the two versions of Snow River by Liu Zongyuan, the writer tries to demonstrate the application of the image cohesion in the English translation of the Chinese image poems.