A Contrastive Study Of Thematic Progression Patterns In English And Chinese Love Poetry

Theme-Rheme theory, especially Thematic Progression patterns recently hasbeen frequently applied to discourse analysis. On the one hand, this theory isconsidered as an effective way of analyzing how a text develops as it shows the basicprinciple of text. On the other hand, the development of discourse analysis may inturn promote the expansion of contrastive analysis to the textual level, which can alsohelp readers better understand the text.The notion of Theme was first proposed by Henri Weil, and further developed bythe Prague School scholar Mattesius and other systemic functional linguistics. On thebasis of this theory, Thematic Progression is put forward to help analyze how a text isdeveloped in different genres of literature and has been studied from differentperspectives. Based on three fundamental types of Thematic Progression put forwardby Danes, many scholars gave different points of view on the classification of thepatterns and did study in nearly all types of genres. However, the contrastive analysisof poetry, especially English and Chinese romantic poems in terms of ThematicProgression theory is seldom done by scholars.Poetry, as one of the most valuable and important genres in literature, has beendone research from many aspects either by Chinese or English scholars. In order tobetter inquire the relationship between two languages, the author do the contrastiveanalysis on thirty-four English and Chinese romantic poems with the synthesis ofDanes’ three fundamental patterns and six major Thematic Progression patternscoined by many scholars, namely the Constant Theme Pattern, the Simple LinearPattern, the Focus Rheme Pattern, the Alternative Pattern, the Comparative Patternand the Derivative Pattern. And the study is based on three main research questions:(1) what features are there in the choice of Themes in Chinese and English romanticpoems respectively?(2) what are the differences between the use of ThematicProgression patterns in Chinese and English romantic poems?(3) what can the readers learn from the differences between Thematic Progression patterns in Chinese andEnglish romantic poems?In order to perfect the study, two steps are carried out. Firstly, two romanticpoems in English and Chinese are analyzed respectively and elaborately in thequalitative analysis concerning their features of Theme choice, their distribution ofThematic Progression patterns and the significance of this contrastive study. Secondly,in the quantitative analysis, fifteen English romantic poems at Romanism period andfifteen Chinese ones at the period of Tang Dynasty are further analyzed to get theconclusions on the statistics of the distribution of Thematic Progression patterns asfollows: the Elliptical Theme exists in both English and Chinese romantic poems, andthere are more Marked Themes and Clausal Themes applied in English poems thanthose in Chinese ones; The types of Thematic Progression are more complicated inEnglish poems than those in Chinese ones; The Comparative Pattern is seldomapplied in English poems while the Focus Rheme Pattern as well as the AlternativePattern are scarcely used in Chinese ones.Despite the limitations of this study, the contrastive study on the similarities anddifferences of the choice of Theme and distribution of patterns of ThematicProgression between English and Chinese romantic poems can, to some extent,provide help for readers to better grasp the topic of the poems, understand the poets’underlying train of thoughts, and then interpret the implicit meaning of the poems.