A Comparative Study Between Chinese And Western Writing From The Perspective Of Media-textuality Modes In Visual Poetry

Semiotics is a subject that is comparatively new and could be widely applied. The visual poetry is in special style and also is a special semiotic phenomenon. The previous researches on visual poetry mostly remain on the surface level, that is, descriptive or appreciative. Therefore it is a new angel to apply the semiotic theory to analyze the visual poetry and make a comparison between Chinese and western visual poetry. Based on the Media-textuality theory of semiotics, this thesis analyzes visual poetry on the theoretical level and tries to reveal the difference between Chinese and western writing by comparison.This thesis includes six parts:Part One is introduction which mainly summarizes the present research situation in this field, analyzes the insufficiency of the previous researches, then points out the problem that will be solved by this thesis, and finally discussed the theoretical value and practical significance of this research.Part Two mainly defines the concept of visual poetry, confines the range of visual poetry in order to makes clear the research object of this thesis. In addition, it briefly introduces the history of visual poetry.Part Three is about the theoretical basis of this thesis. It mainly explains the Media-textuality theory from the aspects of theoretical sources and basic content. Part Four and Five are the core of this thesis. Guided by the Media-textuality theory, Part Four classifies Chinese and western visual poetry. According to the different picture coding mode that they exhibit, they fall into four categories, that is, still life sketch, moment reappearance, track tracing and collage. In each category several poems are analyzed in detail to illuminate how the surplus of the spatial picture coding mode makes up the deficiency of the temporal poetry coding mode. This part mainly presents the common characteristics owned by both Chinese and western visual poetry. Employing the method of comparison, Part Five chooses several comparable Chinese and western visual poems to make comparisons. They are Xuanjisuijin Pictures and Galligrammes, Shenzhi Style and Concrete poetry. It tries to analyze the difference on media-textuality mode and further to discuss the reason that determines the difference, that is, the surplus of Chinese writing and the deficiency of alphabetic writing.Part Six is a brief summary of the whole thesis, which concludes the achievements and also points out the insufficiency.