A Study Of Conceptual Metaphors In Tess Of The D'Urbervilles

As a great realist writer in the second half of the 19th century,Thomas Hardy's outstanding achievements in the novel and poetry can never be ignored,especially his novels,which have melted the hearts of readers with their changeable style,extensive themes and rich content.But another key point for his enduring works is his ingenious application of multiple artistic techniques,especially his use of metaphor,which is fully and vividly reflected in his most famous work:Tess of the D 'Urbervilles.With a history of more than two thousand years,western metaphor studies have formed a consistent system of research since Aristotle,during which a great number of celebrated scholars have emerged.And the contemporary metaphor study,especially the conceptual metaphor put forward by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their book "Metaphors We Live by" in the 1980s,has endowed metaphors with new connotations:metaphor is not only a rhetoric device in the traditional sense,but also a way of thinking,which plays a significant role in people's daily li-ves.Recently,as more and more profound understanding and researches on Thomas Hardy and his works have shown up,a growing number of scholars,including those from China have begun to realize the metaphorical characters and their artistic values of his works.But these scholars only tried to do some unilateral analysis of Tess of the D'Urbervilles from the perspective of metaphor,such as love metaphor and animal metaphor;few scholars have conducted a thorough and comprehensive research on the metaphor of this novel from the perspective of discourse.Professor Liao Meizhen thinks that in the study of metaphor due attention should be paid to its organization function and characteristic in the discourse,that is,the textual function but the present author thinks that metaphor's textual function is not only reflected in the organization,but also reflected in the interaction with the theme.So,based on the conceptual metaphor theory,this article will give a comprehensive analysis on the metaphors in Tess of the D'Urbervilles,which mainly include color metaphor,home metaphor and name metaphor,aiming at clarifying the independent and interactive relationships between these three kinds of metaphors and the novel's theme,showing that the coherence of the theme can be achieved by the application of metaphors,thus effectively proving the importance and feasibility of the conceptual metaphor theory in discourse analysis.This research is mainly a qualitative study.Based on the conceptual metaphor theory,the author first finds out all the metaphors that Hardy has elaborated in Tess of the D'Urbervilles in order to locate the three most representative kinds that are closely connected with the themes the author wants to study;later,the author specifically analyzes the source domain,target domain and metaphorical meanings of each metaphor;at last,the author interprets the independent and interactive relationships between the three kinds of metaphor and the themes of the novel by means of diagram to make relative conclusions.Through the analysis,the author finds that:(1)Hardy has used a lot of metaphors in Tess of the D 'Urbervilles,among which the frequency and the coherent effect on the theme of color metaphor are the most prominent;(2)Each kind of metaphor with internal relationships respectively embodies the coherent function on the theme from different angles;(3)All the metaphors are,in fact,inter-linked to each other,showing a combined coherence function on the novel's theme;(4)The conceptual metaphor theory can be used for textual analysis,and can achieve very good effect.This thesis is significant in the following way:(1)It confirms Lakoff&Johnson's view that metaphor is ubiquitous and it is not only a figure of speech,but also a way of thinking.(2)It proves that the coherence of theme can be achieved by the application of conceptual metaphors,which enlarges the research scope of metaphor and provides a new perspective for discourse analysis.(3)It attaches more attention to the conceptual metaphor theory,thus arousing scholars to conduct some more creative researches from multi-disciplines,multi-angles,and a wider range.