Conceptual Metaphors Of Flowers In Tang Poems

Metaphor is a cognitive tool for human beings to conceptualize unknown things and the external world. The essence of metaphor is to understand and experience one concept in terms of another concept, by mapping from the source domain onto the target domain based on our physical and cultural experience. As the basic way of human thinking, Metaphor exists in our daily language. It has a great influence on the way of speaking and our behavior and thinking. Most conceptual systems are metaphorical in nature. Therefore, metaphor is a cognitive tool. It has close relationships with human beings’ language and culture.Metaphor and poetry have a close relationship, poetry is often written with the help of metaphorical employment. As the masterpiece of poetry and Chinese literature, Tang Poems are full of metaphors. At that time, because of the advocacy and support of the court, the communities appreciate flowers became popular in the Tang Dynasty. The custom not only affected all aspects of social life, but also affected the lives of the Tang poets and the literature works, it had a social role which should not be overlooked. Among flower poems, Li Bai’s poem The Beautiful Lady Yang and Bai Juyi’s The Everlasting Regret are the two most famous and popular Tang poems. The rich metaphorical expressions contained in Tang poets" flower poems provide the application and research of conceptual metaphor theory with much data. These flower poems as well as play an important role in inheriting and developing Chinese fine culture and they are also of great value.This thesis uses conceptual metaphor theory to study peony metaphor, pear blossom metaphor and chrysanthemum metaphor from cognitive perspective. It proves the pervasiveness of the metaphors in poetry. These metaphors reflect the classical culture of Tang Dynasty and even China. First of all, this thesis overviews the related literature which introduces the previous studies on flowers in Tang Poems, describes the value of the study from different perspectives. Then it also explains the conceptual metaphor theory in detail and refers that metaphor is a cognitive tool, by mapping from the source domain onto the target domain. Chapter four is the main part of this thesis which analyzes peony metaphors, pear blossom metaphors, and chrysanthemum metaphors in Tang Poems detailedly. The author finds that metaphors of flowers usually have flowers as the source domain and human or non-human things as the target domain. The appearances, features and living requirements of flowers are projected onto human or non-human things, forming the cross-domain mappings of flowers metaphors, such as Beauty is Peony, Sadness is Pear Blossom, and Aspiration is Chrysanthemum. While dealing with the understanding of flower metaphors and the way those flower metaphors come into being, it turns out that both the cognitive basis and cultural factors play unique roles in the formation of flower metaphors in Tang Poems. So through further analyzing these flower metaphors’ history background and unique meanings, we can better understanding the social politics, economy, culture and other aspects at that time. And finally the thesis reveals that how can flower metaphors in Tang Poems construct abundant Chinese culture.