The Study Of Ontological Metaphor In Landscape And Pastoral Poetry Of Prosperous Tang Dynasty

Ontological metaphor as a universal language phenomenon is attracting more and more attention from various aspects.People initially stayed in rhetorical function level when understanding ontological metaphor and the study was limited to its literary and rhetorical aspects.They gradually rise to cognitive level with the study deepening.Actually,ontological metaphor functions not only as a rhetorical device,but also a cognitive approach,making people understand the relations between one concept and another by mapping.Poetry's uniqueness usually lies on the use of metaphor,especially the application of ontological metaphor.The creation of poetry reached its peak in Tang dynasty and formed the famous landscape and pastoral school during the flourishing period of Tang.Wang Wei and Meng Haoran are two representatives and Li Bai is also prominent for his landscape and pastoral poetry.They are sensitive to the beauty of nature and have unique feelings to the scenery,the sceneries they depict are fascinating,and ontological metaphors are widely used in their poems,therefore they are worthy to be researched.This thesis targets landscape and pastoral poetry in prosperous Tang dynasty as research object,ontological metaphor as theoretical basis and adopts qualitative and quantitative methods analyzes three types of ontological metaphors,namely container metaphor,personification and substance and entity metaphor.This study stands on cognitive point of view from the perspective of the poet analyzes how to construct ontological metaphor in landscape and pastoral poetry and how to understand it while standing on the ground of the readers.It summarizes construction and construal functions of ontological metaphor as well.Through the study the author finds that the poet constructs a poem according to the systematicity and cultural coherence of ontological metaphor.The reader comprehends through cross-domain mapping mechanism as well as the interaction between source domain and target domain of ontological metaphor.Although poets and readers have a difference in many ways and they also have different understandings on the same poem,the common way of thinking and cognitive attitude towards emotion of human beings are identical.It proves that combining ontological metaphor's rhetorical and cognitive function together when comprehending metaphors in landscape and pastoral poetry through ontological metaphor theory not only develops new perspectives for understanding Tang poetry,but also provides a new method for the interpretation of the overall landscape and pastoral poetry.