A CIT-based Approach To The Montage Effect In Wang Wei’s Poetry

Wang Wei, one of the most outstanding poets in Tang Dynasty. Su Dongpo hadonce remarked on him:“His poetry is full of pictures, and his paintings are full ofpoetry.” In Wang Wei’s poetry, we can find various images are juxtaposed andoverlaid. The aesthetic of images is elevated dramatically after juxtaposition. Hispoetry is always like vivid painting. The rhetorical arrangement of juxtaposed imagesin poetry and the idea derived from the combination of two or more images may becalled poetic montage. As we can see, montage is widely existed in Wang Wei’spoetry or even in almost Chinese classic poetry.This thesis starts a new angle to study Wang Wei’s poetry. In the past, manyscholars have made large amount of research on Wang Wei’s poetry from theperspectives of art, lyrics and Buddhism. And nearly no one has studied Wang Wei’spoetry from the angle of cognition. However, this thesis will make some contributionto study his poetry from the perspective of cognition, expanding research orientation.The conceptual juxtaposition in the mental spaces is the basis of semantic montage.When different images are viewed in adjacent spaces, the juxtaposition of images isformed. After juxtaposition, those images are blended to create new emergentmeaning. To this extent, montage is a kind of human thinking model. The conceptualjuxtaposition leads to conceptual blending. Conceptual blending is an important wayto illustrate montage (Li Chunhua, Li Yongzhong2013). Therefore, with the guidanceof CIT and four conceptual networks (single-framing network, frame network,one-sided network and two-sided network) proposed by Fauconnier, this studyexplains the meaning construction mechanism of montage in details. Although in thewest, Conceptual Integration Theory has been used to interpret many linguisticphenomena, it has seldom been applied to Chinese classic poetry, more specially toWang Wei’s poetry. This thesis testifies that it does work. When we show theoperation of meaning construction in Wang Wei’s painting, four mental spaces can bebuilt on the basis of language form and our background knowledge to grasp theconnotative meaning of poetry. Images in the poetry are the carrier of poet’s emotion.The abstract emotional connotation of images which hides behind the language formexists in the inner mental space. Under the guidance of CIT, we can discover the hidden emotional connotation behind the concrete images. All the arrangement ofimages are not appointed by Wang Wei at random, but elaborately selected. WangWei borrowed images to convey his emotion. The readers can’t fully understandWang Wei’s psychological track and flavor, if they understand nature images apartfrom Wang Wei’s background. In order to acquire the connotative meaning, readersmust link those images with Wang Wei’s background knowledge to produce mappingconnection. The new cognitive method of analyzing Wang Wei’s poetry opens a newangle to interpret Chinese classical poetry, expands our awareness icon and makesgreat contribution to poetry teaching.This thesis makes a brief summary of Wang Wei’s achievements in poetry fromthe perspectives of aesthetics of painting-in-poetry, aesthetics of nature andcountryside, aesthetics of Zen’s （禅学）atmosphere and aesthetics of poet’s image.Therefore, we can have a better understanding of his poetry.