A Cognitive Study Of Stream-of-consciousness Novel To The Lighthouse Based On Mental Space And Conceptual Blending Theory

The advent of stream-of-consciousness(SOC) novels in the early 20 th century symbolized that novel technique, literary concept and philosophical thought in the west had transformed from modern time towards contemporary time, marking the reform of social consciousness and aesthetic tendency in the western world. Today,the techniques in SOC novels have been extensively applied to various art forms like poetry, drama and films. To the Lighthouse is a representative SOC work whose perfect combination of form and connotation shows its author Virginia Woolf’s extraordinary artistic skill. Since its publication, the novel has always been the focus of literary criticism. Scholars have set out to study it from various perspectives, such as narratology, acoustics, aesthetics and feminism.In the late 20 th and early 21 th century, with the rapid development of cognitive linguistics, a cognitive turn began to emerge in the realm of literary criticism. An increasing number of scholars began to draw on cognitive linguistics to analyze and interpret literary text, expecting to provide a new perspective and approach for text analysis. However, discussions of SOC novels under cognitive linguistics are still very rare. Therefore, based on Mental Space Theory(MST) and Conceptual Blending Theory(CBT), this thesis sets out to conduct a cognitive analysis of the SOC novel –To the Lighthouse, expecting to help the readers appreciate Woolf’s “Subjective Reality” and reconstruct the deep themes.Researches suggest that To the Lighthouse is a betrayal of traditional novels in terms of plot, grammar, discourse structure and narrative strategy. The narrative focus switches frequently between base space and consciousness space unnoticed, which has brought huge confusion to its readers. While with the accessibility of the base space, the markedness of the space builder, the dynamic transformation of focus and angle of view, the MST possesses excellent persuasion to these points. So firstly, by adopting MST to analyze the novel’s discourse structure, this thesis aims at constructing a set of Mental Space Network(MSN) to present a systematic and potentinterpretation of SOC discourse. Then in the aspect of thematic meaning, this thesis focuses on the feminism in the novel. Feminism has been a stereotyped topic in Woolf study. However, major studies of this topic mainly focus on the interpretation of feminism itself, neglecting the cognitive process from reading texts to comprehending texts and to generating the feminist idea in readers’ minds. So secondly, by adopting CBT, this thesis aims at identifying seemingly unrelated consciousness spaces and mappings like “identity mapping” and “relation mapping” to reproduce the on-line construction process of textual meanings as well as reveal the emergent thematic theme therein – binary opposition between genders and Androgyny.Through the study, this thesis has verified the feasibility of adopting MST and CBT to analyze SOC text. The establishment of MSN and reproduction of thematic meaning’s construction shall enhance the reading experience towards SOC novels.Meanwhile, analyzing To the Lighthouse from this perspective provides a new approach to studying SOC novels. Thereinto, adopting CBT to analyze Woolf’s androgyny is a new attempt.