A Study On Birds Imagery Of "Book Of Songs"

"Book of songs" as the originator of Chinese poetry, its rich connotation attracts manyscholars,who research it year and year.These years, to interpret the "book of songs"from theperspective of imagery has gradually become a hot topic.Many scholars who study it from themacroscopica perspective of plants or animals imagery,or from the microscopica perspective ofimagery of water, fish, horse and picking up work, have all made some achievements.Birdsimagery of "book of songs" is a relatively important one among these numerous imageries. Butthere are only a small number of single papers on birds imagery of "book of songs",somemasters’ theses is only slightly involved, and there is no special study on the birds imagery ofthe "book of songs" independently, this leaves author a very large research space.The birds imagery of "book of songs" is not only makes us know more species of birds,but also has a profound cultural carrier, which has been printed with all natural and socialaspects of the era of "book of songs" era. We can explore our ancestors’ footprint along thebirds imagery and to feel their era.As birds imagery contains colorful cultural connotation, sowe can study it from different perspectives, this article altogether is divided into five parts tocarry out the research.The first part is mainly a general introduction of birds imagery of "book of songs",whichfirstly defines the connotation and evolution of the "imagery".Secondly, from the features ofwhat the people have seen or heard of the birds, this part has an overall interpretation of thebirds imagery, which mainly divided into these parts: the flight of birds, the twitter of birds, thefeathers of birds and the nests of birds. This part is dedicate to exploring the culturalconnotation which is contained in these birds’ imageries.Finally, it has a discussion on thereasons of the abundant birds’ imageries.The second part is mainly to interpret the imagery of birds from a religiousperspective.Birds totem worship is an effective and widely distributed cultural phenomenon inour ancestors’ era, so the author makes an independent introduction of the birds totemworship.Then it has an analysis of the birds totem worship,"book of songs" of bird totem areanalyzed, mainly has made detailed explanations on swallows,Phoenix, cranes, and hawks totem.The third part is mainly study the birds imageries from the perspective of love andmarriage.There are nearly half of the poetries which contain the birds imagery is related to loveand marriage, so this part is the key chapter of this paper.The author has divided this part intofour sections, altogether took mandarin duck, goose, swallow, magpie, the four most typicalbirds as the object of study.It has not only interpreted the connation of love and marriage whichis contained in the poetries related to these for kinds of birds, furthermore,it has made extendedinterpretation of these birds’ symbolic connation from the perspective of Chinese culture.The fourth part mainly discusses the praise and satire which concealed in the birdsimagery.Many poems written in seemingly birds, but are metaphors of people in fact. Evilpeople are symbolized by evil birds, moral people are symbolized by kind birds, or they makeuse of some birds’ behaviors to symbolized the actions of some people.This chapter is dividedinto three sections, firstly, the author has briefly discussed the thought of "book of songs",mainly studied on the appearence of metaphor thought and the relationship between metaphorand Bi-xing.Then in the second and third section the author has made some discussions on thebirds imageries respectively from the perspective of praising and satirizing people.the authortakes crane, Phoenix, pheasant and herons imageries as typical examples to praise moralpeople,and "owl, crow, sparrow" for satirizing evil people.The last part has made a brief introduction of the effect of the birds imagery’ depiction onthe later literary works.The selection and usage of birds imageries of the "book of songs"couldbe taken as having profound influence on later literary works.Birds imageries had beenintensively appeared in many literary works in different periods,among them many aspects havecommon ground with the birds imagery of the "book of songs".