A Study On Ezra Pound's Cathay From The Perspective Of Cognitive Iconicity

Ezra Pound is a forerunner of the imagist movement.Inspired by Chinese traditional poems and Japanese haiku,he developed the imagery theory of poetry.Cathay is one of the evidence of his melting western and eastern poetic styles.Consisting of around 14 translated poems mostly from Li Bai in Tang Dynasty,it has promoted the modernization of American poetry and becomes a model for new trend of poetry composition.Pound's translation of Chinese traditional poems has not only pushed forward the development of poetry in western countries but also is worth further studying in the field of poetry translation.Chinese scholars have long dubbed Pound's translation as unfaithful translation or creative translation.It seems that any phenomena that cannot be explained or rationalized according to the prevailing norms are discarded into the rubbish bin of creation and then to be ignored.However,rationality and creation are not two controversial concepts.Behind any creation works,there must be some scientific reasons for their success.Likewise,Pound's translation of Cathay is not alienated and arbitrary coincidence.Behind it,there are social,cultural and cognitive laws integrated artistically together contributing to the generation of his great pieces.So far,a lot of poetics,linguistics,social and cultural and interdisciplinary theories have been applied in analyzing Pound's translation Cathay.However,few have been done in micro-level,such as in cognitive iconicity.Iconicity theory due to its opposition to the authority of arbitrariness and immaturity has been questioned ever since its presence.Though under this unsupportive conditions,it has achieved great success and be applied widely in linguistic studies.Its application in translation studies is rather new but promising.Especially due to the rising of cognitive theories,iconicity has gained more and more attention.In translation studies,worldwide scholars have used iconicity theories to explain the relationship between source and target text and many Chinese scholars have concluded various iconicity principles such as proximity iconicity,sequence iconicity to discuss how to get more faithful translation.And both literature and non-literature texts have been touched upon.This thesis is aimed to justify Pound's creative translation in Cathay from the perspective of cognitive iconicity theory.By means of a product-based approach,the author compares the source text with the target text from micro phonetics level to macro discourse level under the guidance of cognitive iconicity theory.It is found that a lot of Pound's unique or creative translation can be explained by cognitive iconicity theory and a lot of iconicity principles can be found in Pound's translation.Cognitive iconicity is not only a guiding translation concept but also a translation strategy for Pound.Based on the abovementioned findings,this research can provide scientific evidence for the rationality of Pound's extraordinary translation from the perspective of cognitive iconicity,explains the essence and means of Pound's creative translation from a cognitive point of view,echoes the trend of cognitive approach in poetry translation studies and suggests new interdisciplinary methods for poetry translation.