A Cognitive Study Of Metaphors In Tess Of The D’urbervilles

Metaphor is an important way of thinking, it can help people to recognize and grasp the world, the essence of metaphor is to understand and experience one kind of thing through the other things. In many literary works, metaphor is characterized by describing characters, suggesting the scene, expressing emotions and narrating, etc. The using of metaphor, it can not only deepen the theme of the article, but also it can promote emotional expressions of article, so metaphor is one of the basic literature problems. People can use metaphors to express their affections. Conceptual metaphors occur repeatedly in literary works and reflect the subject of the work, helping the readers understand the main contents and key meaning in the literature work. Regarding the world masterpiece Tess of the D ’urbervilles, there are a lot of scholars and students from many different perspectives to carry on the analysis, but most of them will focus on the causes of the tragedy Tess. However, few people study this novel from the perspective of metaphor, and metaphor is just a kind of important cognitive way. Through the analysis of related statistical datas, from the research trend, we can find that analyzing literary works from the perspective of metaphor shows clear ascendant trend. The work style of Thomas Hardy’s novels is changeable, the subject matter is common and the content is rich. He is especially good at using metaphor in the novel art gimmick to rich his writing skills, enhance the expressiveness and describe temperament characters of the novel. Metaphor can be derived from both the affinity between different semantic units within the text, and can be derived from a particular narrative unit and the meaning of text civilization unit of physical contact. With huge civilization, social and historical connotation, this kind of semantic units lose the things it should happen, the result will make us identity the society which is full of images, civilization and historical significance. Hardy often uses this kind of metaphorical words in his novel.Tess of the D’urbervilles describes a young pretty milkmaid who contributes herself to the rich schoolyard bullies because of poverty, ignorance and seductions. After suffering the physical and material torment, she finally lost her true lover Clay. Under the indignation and despair, he killed Jare and walked to the gallows peacefully. Before her death, Tess left the site of Xuan Shi Temple, and waited for being arrested by the police quietly. Those pillars were still standing on the wilderness to greet the rising of the sun which became the brightest landscape of wasteland. This is the scene that the dawn is coming, and it is also the hope of birth; however, Tess is going to the execution ground and is ready to die. This kind of "the hope of birth" and "the disappearance of death" constitutes a sharp contrast and makes the novel tragedy color develop to the acme. In order to highlight the tragedy of Tess and her personality, in this paper, it studies the metaphor in this novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles, this article analyzes the main metaphors using the theory of conceptual metaphor. It also conveys that metaphor plays an important role in the conception system of people’s daily thinking and actions, especially the analysis of color metaphor, multiple metaphor, home metaphor, background metaphor, which further enhance the understanding of the novel theme, as well as the analysis and appreciation of the novel from the perspective of metaphor.