A Metaphorical Study Of Images In The Book Of Poetry

The Book of Poetry is China's first collection of poetry, titled "Poetry" or "300 Poems", a total of 305, divided into three parts : the wind, Accor, Chung.It is natural and simple style, vivid and beautiful language, as well as the methods of artistic expression has had a profound impact on the later literary. The research of The Book of Poetry in the past more focused on the perspective of literary studies, particularly from the rhetoric and imagery, and other aspects, and less from a cognitive point of view to analyze. There are few cases can be listed to study The Book of Poetry domestically from a cognitive point of view. This dissertation attempts to comprehend and appreciate The Book of Poetry from cognitive linguistics theories, namely conceptual metaphor based on The Book of Poetry. Based on Lakoff & Johnson's conceptual metaphor theory, this paper discusses the metaphorical expression of the sacrifice poems, and resentment and Irony poetry, war poetry, marriage and love poems in The Book of Poetry and analyzes the culture connotation of the main metaphor, the similarity between the source domain and the target domain, as well as cognitive mechanisms to explore the common character of the cognitive metaphor theory involved in the Chinese traditional culture.Through the sort and integration of metaphor in The Book of Poetry, we find four important metaphors: First: In the marriage and love poems, the beauty of flower is the appearance of girl; the unbroken affections are like unstopped flowing water; The flying birds transmit missing; the plant-picking express their intimate and love with each other. Secondly, in the resentment and Irony poetry, the sky refers to the son of God and ruler; the rat represents the explorer. Thirdly, in the war poetry, the fate of soldier is like the withering and death of grass; the bad weather (rain and snow) is the sign of the plight of the soldier; the returning bird or geese represent the lovesick wife; and the horse, cart and weapon are symbols of the excellent quality of the soldiers. Fourth, in the Sacrifice Poems, "社稷"means a state. The source domain of the four categories of metaphor is all from the most basic life experience and the observation of the basic natural and social phenomena. It has a strong similarity with the domain source. It also plays a role of mapping which changes the invisible to visible, abstract to concrete. This also proves that metaphor is not only a form of language, and more importantly, is a universal human cognitive style, a systematic way of thinking, action and expression of thought.