A Cognitive Analysis Of The Sound And The Fury's Dislocation Of Time And Space From The Perspective Of Figure-Ground Theory

With the development of interface study,there are more possibilities for the study of literature.Literature works are constituted of language,so the literature study cannot separate from linguistics.People begin to study literature works by using cognitive poetics,which is a research on the theory of literature and art.Figure-ground theory is an important theory of cognitive poetics,it originates from psychology,and then applied into the study of language structure.Stream-of-consciousness fictions focus on the description of characters' psychological activities.The conversion of content often depends on free association.The narration of conventional fictions always follows the spatial and temporal order.When the order is broken,the unexpected material will be prominent.The dislocation of time and space is the typical characteristic of stream-of-consciousness fictions.It can receive enough attention easily.At present,the application of figure-ground theory almost concentrates on the spacial construction of sentences.Nobody has ever tried to use figure-ground theory to analyze stream-of-consciousness fictions,let alone making analysis of the dislocation of time and space in them.This thesis tries to analyze the dislocation of time and space in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury by virtue of figure-ground theory to ease the burden general readers will have when they are appreciating the obscure stream-of-consciousness fictions.This thesis consists of five chapters.The first chapter makes a brief introduction to the whole thesis.It introduces the motivation of the study,the significance of the study and the methodology used in this thesis.The second chapter is a literature review about the previous study about figure-ground theory and The Sound and the Fury at home and abroad.Chapter Three is the elaboration of figure-ground theory in cognitive poetics.The fourth chapter is the core part of this thesis.It makes a cognitive analysis of effects created by the dislocation of time and space in the six parts selected from the fiction by using figure-ground theory.The fifth chapter will give the conclusion to the study.The thesis thinks that figure-ground theory is a good tool to analyze the dislocation of time and space in The Sound and the Fury.This thesis finds that all the phenomena of the dislocation of time and space in The Sound and the Fury can be analyzed by figure-ground theory.It is easy for readers to know when is the right time to use figure-ground theory because the dislocation of time and space is so strange that readers must pay attention to it.The cognitive effects created from the dislocation is the meaning Faulkner wants readers to understand.In this study,figure-ground theory is applied to the analysis of the dislocations of time and space in The Sound and the Fury,which proves the feasibility and broadens the application of the theory.Meanwhile,this study can lighten the burden of readers when they are reading stream-of-consciousness fictions,which makes nonspecialists read larger range of literature works possible.