1, analogy. 2. Abstraction. 3. Metonymy.
1.
Comparison is to write things as people or people as crops, or things as things and things as things. What is compared is called "ontology" and what is compared is called "quasi-body".
Contrast can not only make readers have a clear impression of what the author expresses, but also feel the author's strong feelings about it, thus causing * * *.
Analogy can be divided into two categories, namely imitation and personification. In China's ancient poems and modern poems, personification is the most common rhetorical device. For example, Du Fu's poem "Good rain knows the season, when spring happens. Sneak into the night with the wind and moisten things silently. " Good rain "is the noumenon, which seems to understand the solar terms of time, just like the solar terms needed for the germination and growth of all things. It comes quietly at night with the spring breeze, nourishing the thirsty earth." This kind of appropriate contrast pours into the poet's happy mood for the spring rain. Write the characteristics and character of the spring rain very delicately and accurately.
Another example is Du Mu's "Farewell", "Affectionate but always ruthless, but I think I can't laugh before I die. Candles have a heart to say goodbye and cry for others until dawn. " When we broke up, we were obviously affectionate. When we looked up at each other with tears in our eyes, we couldn't laugh. The candles at the banquet seem to understand this parting and cry for us until dawn. Candles are inhuman, but at the farewell party, they seem to suit the poet's heart. Why? Because of the light of the candle, the poet thought that after tonight, we would go our separate ways, and I'm afraid there would be few reunions in the future, so he was filled with emotion at that time, which was hard to restrain, because he was invited in his heart and everything in front of him was invited, expressing his deep, real and inseparable feelings for his old friend.
There are a lot of personification rhetoric not only in China's ancient poems, but also in foreign poems. Such as the English poet and scholar philip sidney's "What a sad step, the moon:
What a sad step, ah, moon, you climbed into the sky!
How quiet, your pale face!
What, a busy shooter in heaven?
I also want to dance with his sword.
Really, if you are familiar with the eyes of love for a long time.
I can recognize love from your haggard face.
As you can see, you are worried about love,
For me, who was in the same boat, you told me your situation.
…… ……
The "I" in the poem is suffering from love, and everything is so sad. He personified the moon and thought that it was also "climbing into the sky with sad steps". He used his own feelings to prove that the moon is also suffering from emotional suffering. In the poet's eyes, the steps of the moon are "sad" and the face of the moon is "pale" and "haggard". It is precisely because the moon is also emotionally frustrated that the poet expresses his complex and abstract inner anguish with the help of the moon, giving readers an intuitive imagination and feeling, which indirectly shows that he is despised and abandoned by his lover, even though his feelings are so deep and loyal. If the poet just writes on paper with a pen how uncomfortable and sad he is, it is impossible for the reader to have a deeper understanding, and he will not achieve the purpose he wants to express.
Just like the English philosopher and poet Thomas Hunis. Tim's Autumn:
A wisp of cold air is floating in the autumn night-
I slipped out the door,
Seeing a red moon leaning on the hedge,
Like a red-faced farmer.
I didn't stop talking, just nodded.
Surrounded by thoughtful stars,
White face, like a city child.
The theme of this poem is that the moon and stars are hanging in the sky on a bleak autumn night. The poet unexpectedly compared the moon to a "red-faced farmer" and the shining stars to a white-faced child. We can clearly see the poet's tendency to advocate returning to nature and getting tired of city life. When you think of "farmers", you will think of rural life, because "children" will think of a single natural life. If the poet writes his ideas in the form of philosophical papers, readers may not understand them, let alone accept them. The proper use of metaphor in poetry achieves the beauty of combining rhythm and rhythm, and readers often accept this beauty in the process of reading.
There are very few people who imitate things in poetry, but there are a lot of remains of people who imitate things, especially modern poetry, which will not be discussed further here.
abstract
Belinsky said: "Emotion is a major active factor in the essence of poetry; Without emotion, there would be no poet, and there would be no poetry ... ""The essence of poetry is to give vivid, emotional and beautiful images to shapeless thoughts. "
We call belinsky's "vivid, emotional and beautiful image", which enables poets to express certain emotions and thoughts as poetic images. Poetry is the image art of language. Without images, there is no poetry; Without extensive and profound image culture, there would be no poetry reaching its peak.
China is a country of poetry. The source of China's poetry is The Book of Songs. As early as more than 2,500 years ago, China had the earliest 305 poems in the world. The greatness of The Book of Songs lies in its collection of vivid, emotional and beautiful images, which is the first of its kind in China's poetry. The profound and long-standing image culture in The Book of Songs still affects and even determines people's way of thinking in poetry creation to a great extent.
The image culture of China's poems reached its peak in the Tang Dynasty. As far as the whole Tang poetry is concerned, it limits the composition of expression and ambition to the maximum extent, and gives full play to the sensibility and perfection of images. Even after 1000 years, it won the favor of Pound and Lowell, the originator of English and American Imagism on the other side of the ocean, and became the artistic soil for the birth of English and American Imagism poetry.
This can be seen from Li Bai's Jade Family. As follows:
Dew fell on the steps of jade, and the night was long. Dew wet the stone. Go back to my room and put down the crystal curtain, still looking at the exquisite moon through the curtain.
What the whole poem leaves the reader is only the image of a disgruntled woman in the palace: although it is late at night, she still stands outside the door until the Millennium on the steps wets her socks, and she wakes up; However, when she returned to the house, she just put down the crystal curtain, but looked up at the autumn moon through the exquisite curtain.
Writing palace grievances does not mention the word "resentment" at all, nor does it involve mentality. The poet seems to be making a purely objective and emotional description with indifference, but his bitter feelings are like echoes. As the saying goes, "without saying a word, you are happy."
It is true that, as far as the sensibility and perfection of poetic images are concerned, Tang poetry is almost an insurmountable peak. This may be one of the reasons for the birth of China's modern poetry. In order to seek a breakthrough, give full play to the charm of images, and make abstract thoughts and emotions completely emotional, some poets turn to French symbolism, such as the universal use of symbols, hints and synaesthesia.
It is a matter of time whether China's modern poetry has surpassed the Tang poetry in the perceptual and perfect image. Interestingly, the innovation of another poetic image has also begun to brew quietly, and a new poetic image is full of aesthetic interest.
If the highly emotional poetic image originated in the Book of Songs and reached its peak in the Tang Dynasty is called "figuration", then the essence of this poetic image innovation is to weaken the sensibility of "figuration", and as a result, the abstract image-"abstraction" has become a universal trend.
In fact, just as "figuration" originated from The Book of Songs, the abstraction of images in China's poems also originated from China's classical poems. There is a southern dynasty poet Lu Kai's "to Ye Fan" as evidence:
Fold the plum for each post and send it to the leader. There is no better gift in Jiangnan, and flowers will send spring.
Being in the beautiful and colorful south of the Yangtze River, the poet always thinks of his friend who is the leader in the windy and frosty northern country, so he breaks a plum blossom and wants to send it to him by "mail". But we didn't send plum blossoms, but abstracted as "a spring". Originally, the poet wanted to give a friend a complete spring, a deep sense of spring, and an affectionate comfort instead of plum blossoms! It's amazing.
If this abstraction of poetic images is rare in classical poetry, it is not difficult to find it in some modern poems in the 1940s. Ji Xian, the originator of Taiwan Province's modernism, wrote this poem at dusk of 1944:
The foreign ships in the barracks/blew away the sadness in May.
The poet abstracted the auditory "figuration" of the bugle sounded by the "foreign horn in the barracks" as "sadness in May". On the surface, the "sensibility" of the image has been weakened, and the image has changed from the original "figurative" to "abstract", but the poetry has been greatly strengthened. If you change the "sadness in May" to something like "the horn of sadness", poetry will disappear.
Nine-leaf poet Chen Zai 1946 wrote "Dusk, I am by your side", which also has the same effect:
There is no wind, but leaves are falling in pieces,/throwing strange cold on your shoulders.
This is to abstract the visual concreteness of "fallen leaves" as "extremely cold".
In the 1980s, "abstraction" began to appear frequently in Chinese mainland's new poetry creation, and its potential fell from the sky like the water of the Yellow River. We can cite a series of examples at will:
(1) the old man lying on the wall looking at/mind on the pipe (Guo Peikang's Mid-Autumn Festival in Western Sichuan)
(2) Tonight we have double the capacity for liquor/a few thoughts/a few longings (Sun, Mid-Autumn Festival).
(3) Or like the couple/hand in hand, walking towards the grass and trees (Zhang, "Cars Passing Huiyuan")
(4) bamboo table, filled with wealth/bamboo pot bubble incense (Sun Xinkai's Zhushanren)
Yes, she is very beautiful. /How many men's expectations did her lines echo (Li Famo, the girl in the mirror)
⑥ Walking into the foreign audience/the enthusiasm of 0/3 curtain calls/walking into the spectacle that swept the headlines of Hong Kong newspapers overnight (Yang Yang's "Rebound Pipa Girl")
⑦ Sit firmly in Jialing, Sit firmly/A brand-new change (James Tien, starting line).
⑧ Consolidate one belief after another/pave one expectation after another (author, to Xiuyu Port Giant Crane)
It is not difficult to sum up two types of "abstraction" from the above examples. First, "concrete" and "abstract" appear in tandem. Example 7 is abstracted from "Jialing" (motorcycle) to "a brand-new change". The other is that "concreteness" does not appear, and "abstraction" directly replaces "concreteness", but readers can think about it. Example (5) is to directly replace "expectation" with "expectation".
Secondly, we can also find that the so-called "abstraction" is actually like. The abstraction of image is the poet's aesthetic orientation to his image by expressing some subtle feelings and thoughts. Although the sensibility of the image is weakened, it must retain the "figurative" characteristics of the original image and have the sensibility of five senses; Otherwise, it is no longer an image. For example, (1), although the burning cigarette butt is abstracted as "idea", it is "lit and extinguished on the pipe"; Another example is (5). Although "longing eyes" are abstracted as "longing", they can be "bounced back".
It is a big mistake to think that this kind of poetic image innovation is only a small skill.
As long as you pay a little attention, it is not difficult to find that there are four lyric ways of poetry in the past:
The first is the empathy for the image, or "the feeling of being there". For example, Wang's "The situation is high and the wind is strong, and the mountains are coming" (in the mountains) is to render his homesickness with the bleak autumn wind and yellow leaves falling. Another example is Tao Yuanming's "under the hedge of picking chrysanthemums, you can see Nanshan leisurely." (Drinking (Part V)) This is the image of the lyrical hero leisurely picking chrysanthemums, which embodies the natural and leisurely life interest he is intoxicated with after retirement. This lyric way has also been adopted by western symbolism and imagism.
The second is because of the image, or "touching the scene." For example, Wang Weizhi's "friend's prince", spring has passed and you are still here. What does it matter? "(An Autumn Night in the Mountain) depicts the quiet, harmonious and beautiful pictures of the early autumn rain and dew, the bright moon shining, the clear spring overflowing the rocks, the girl returning at night and the fishing boat launching in the mountains, in order to express her desire to be intoxicated in the mountains and willing to retire.
The third is to express emotions with images. For example, Li Yuzhi's How Sad Can You Be? Like a river flowing eastward. "("When are the spring flowers and the autumn moon? " ) This is a metaphor similar to "Spring Water in One River", which expresses hatred for national subjugation, yearning for the motherland and nostalgia for past lives from endless time and space. Another example is Qin Guan's "plum blossoms are sent with posts, and fish are long. This hate is insignificant." This is another parody of "this hate is not heavy" to express its endless hatred mixed with anxiety, depression, travel anxiety and homesickness. Image lyric is the most common lyric way in new poetry.
The fourth is to express your mind directly. For example, Li's "I have to vote for me since yesterday; It hurts my heart even more today. "("Xuanzhou Xie Lou Farewell School Letter Shu Yun ") The whole poem begins with these two prosaic sentence patterns, which vent the depression and anger accumulated for a long time because it is difficult to give up and stay, and the ambition is hard to pay.
Of the above four lyric ways, the first three are inseparable from "concreteness", which are extremely emotional and perfect, fully embodying the characteristics of poetry, so they are widely used in poetry creation. However, those avant-garde poets have opened up a new world of "abstract" lyricism by virtue of their abstraction of poetic images.
Look at the sky in Dingmang (Star Poetry Journal No.7, 1984):
Snow shines in your eyes/like a flame. /This is the shining earth/The reflection in your heart. However, what I see is your joy/pour out/spread your love shining on the motherland!
The poet abstracted "snow light" as "the joy of the sky pouring down" and "shining love" paved by the motherland, thus enthusiastically eulogizing the broad and enthusiastic love of the sky for the motherland.
Another example is Gu's Hell Valley (Star Poetry Publishing No.7 +0984):
Oh! A small egg,/connecting the two extremes of the world,/putting heaven and hell together for exhibition. Look! /In the boiling spring,/Laughter boils,/Bitterness boils. ...
Hell Valley is in the suburbs of Taipei. There is a boiling spring for boiling eggs. The poor set up stalls there to sell eggs, and tourists cooked for fun. The poet abstracted the eggs being boiled in the "boiling spring" as "laughter" and "bitterness", thus expressing the profound exposure and criticism of the extremely unequal social reality of polarization between heaven and hell.
This kind of "abstract" lyric, which comes from the abstraction of poetic images, is actually the enrichment and development of the third lyric way-image lyric. It has developed into a big country and brought new shocks and surprises to China's poetry circles.
3. Metonymy
In conversation or writing, it is called metonymy to borrow another name or sentence that is closely related to it, instead of directly saying the people, things and things to be expressed. Also known as "renaming". Among them, the replacement is called borrowing, and the replacement is called ontology.
There are three main ways of metonymy:
First, feature generates ontology. It refers to replacing the name of the ontology with the characteristics and signs of the borrowing body.
For example:
(1) Kites are colorful and varied, including eagles, parrots, cranes and centipedes. ...
(2) "It turns out that your suppository has met a kind of good luck. Naturally, the disease is completely cured; No wonder Lao Shuan smiles all day. " The gray beard said as he walked towards Uncle Kang. (Lu Xun's medicine)
Second, proper names replace noumenon. Refers to the use of a typical person or thing's special name as a borrowing body, rather than the original name. For example:
(3) Three cobblers make a Zhuge Liang.
(4) If you kill a Li Gongpu, millions of Li Gongpu will stand up! (Wen Yiduo's last speech)
Third, concrete generation abstraction. Refers to replacing related abstract things with concrete things. For example:
(5) The people of China, under the leadership of China Production Party, defeated the imperialist rule in China with millet and rifles.
(6) The model is not a model. From west to east, the west eats pancakes and the east drinks porridge. (Zhao Shuli, Comrade Lao Yang)
Fourth, the local generation of the whole. Is to replace the ontology with the representative part of things. For example:
(7) In the past few years, I failed to recite half a sentence of The Power of Literary Records, which I read as a child. (Lu Xun's "A Little Thing")
(8) It is one of the eight points for attention in the three major disciplines not to take a needle and a thread from the masses.
Here's an example:
Metonymy/Water Cave Snake
When he giggled, he heard a gust of wind passing by him.
"You hung vanilla, intoxicated in my dream. Your drooping back can't see me dancing around your shadow at night. Reach out your hand and I will walk into the ocean of flowers together. "
He smiled and didn't answer. The breeze blew off the grass in his ear, and the sad moon could not call back the deformity.
"Chrysanthemum flowers in spring, the night is deserted. I saw ants wandering in the distance. "
She scratched her hair sadly, wondering who was lying.
"A dream hurt the night, and a girl told you that she wanted to be by your side, praying that God would let her and another soul bloom brilliant flowers of youthful life. Finally, she smiled and said nothing, looking like a stray falcon. " The setting sun is blurred. The Iraqis have set sail.
The girl paddled cassia twig, and the river was clearly covered with tooth marks.
An apple lured him down the river, but her stomach was empty and her face was blue. She did not hesitate to go ashore to taste the red apples.
She said to Blue Leaf, "This is a green and sweet apple."
A Ran said, "What a bright red and golden apple."
He shouted wildly, "Apple, apple. If you have time. What is the time? The river is long and the perfume bag is empty, so it stays for a long time. Can't catch loneliness, who is the youth brigade? "
Stretching and shivering in the running water.
Metonymy is an important traditional figure of speech in Chinese rhetoric, and some principles should be paid attention to when using it. Only in this way can we ensure the correct use of metonymy. The application of metonymy mainly follows three principles: relevance, prominence and mirror image cutting.
relevance
Metonymy is a replacement between ontology and borrowing body, and the premise of this replacement is the relationship between them. Only when there is such a correlation between the two can the correlation mechanism communicate ontology and borrowing body. This correlation can be temporal, spatial or causal, species-specific and so on. It is not the universal connection of the physical world, but the result of human cognition, which is the connection of psychological level. If this relevance is to be used in metonymic rhetoric, it must be recognized by most people, because a metonymic text needs readers to interpret. If the reader still can't find the connection between metonymy and ontology after thinking, then this rhetorical activity is a failure. Of course, some correlations may involve special fields or be identified within only one group. When using this relevance to construct metonymic discourse, it should be explained in the context, so that readers can find the reasons in their interpretation. The association between metonymy and ontology is the most basic requirement of metonymy.
(B) the principle of importance
As far as the relationship between ontology and borrowing body is concerned, in order to realize the simple function of saying and saying, the thing closest to ontology is most likely to become borrowing body. That is to say, in a conceptual domain, the closer to the concept of ontology, the more likely it is to become a borrowing body. However, the use of most metonymic texts is not as simple as changing names. The expresser always hopes that this passage will play a more or less descriptive role. With the participation of this factor, the principle of prominence plays a role. The expresser presents the most prominent features to the reader as a borrowing body, which makes the ontology more vivid and enables the reader to deeply understand the characteristics of the ontology.
Of the above two principles, relevance is the basic principle and prominence is the highest principle. The formation of metonymic discourse must be based on the principle of relevance, which is the premise of metonymy. The quality of metonymic text depends on its adherence to the principle of prominence. The more obvious the object of borrowing, the more vivid and profound the description of ontology.
(3) Tangency principle
The use of metonymy can highlight the characteristics of things, sometimes it plays the role of praise and sometimes it plays the role of irony. Therefore, the use of metonymy should pay attention to the context of the topic, mainly in two aspects.
First, the rhetorical object. Different styles of metonymy should be treated differently, especially when describing the characters in the works. People of different natures should highlight different characteristics in order to better depict characters. For example, the Fisherman written by Qu Yuan in Chu Ci of the Warring States Period:
When the fisherman saw it, he asked, Isn't this son Dr. San Lv? Why is this happening?
Doctor is the official name of Chu, who is in charge of the housework of three royal families in Chu: Qu, Jing and Zhao. Qu Yuan used to be a doctor in San Lv. Because he was born in an honest and frank place, he won the respect of the world, so he is named Qu Yuan by the official name here to show his respect.
Lu Xun's Medicine depicts characters;
You know Aunt Red Eye went to ask questions, but he talked to him ... Red Eye knew that there was only one old lady in his family. ...
Brother Yi is a fist stick ... The hunchback in the corner suddenly becomes happy.
Here, "red eye" and "hunchback" are obviously bad physical characteristics, which is ironic. When describing the villains, we just grasped these two characteristics and portrayed them vividly; If this is applied to the portrayal of positive characters, the effect will be counterproductive.
Second, stylistic differences. Metonymy figures of speech are widely used in novels and poems. In novels, metonymy is often used to describe things in order to portray characters. In poetry, sometimes due to the adjustment of words and melody, we have to change the name of things and use metonymy; Sometimes metonymy is used in order not to tell the truth directly, to leave more semantic gaps for readers, to arouse readers' association and to enhance the aesthetic characteristics of poetry. Compared with the first two styles, metonymy is generally not used in political style because it takes semantic understanding as its main requirement.
conclusion
Metonymy is an important traditional figure of speech in Chinese rhetoric, and the research results of metonymy in ancient times are scattered in poetry and literary theory, lacking systematic discussion. Modern research focuses on the micro, so it is particularly necessary to study the classification, function and application principles of metonymy from a macro perspective. Based on the previous research results, this paper holds that metonymy is a temporary substitute for related concepts in the same conceptual domain. Generally speaking, metonymy can be divided into three levels: first, metonymy is a part of ontology; Second, the borrowing body is not a part of the ontology, but it is internally related; Third, borrowing is based on a certain level of national culture. The function of metonymy is to make the language vivid, concise, changeable and humorous, which can be summarized as the function of speaking and describing. Relevance, prominence and context are the three principles of metonymy.