In literary works, content gaps refer to the incompleteness or absence of mention of the person being written about, as well as the partial or complete absence of the things described and the scenery described. Some of the gaps in the content are to highlight the theme, and some are to be implicit. If they are used regardless of the needs of the topic, the topic will naturally be overwhelmed. If the author's intention is stated one by one, there will be no room for deep and extensive aftertaste. It is precisely the presence of certain imperfections that gives literary images a sense of uncertainty and ambiguity, which enables emotions and insights to be contained in the images, which arouses the recipient's desire to fill in the gaps, and which brings about the joy of re-creation. This is what Sikong Tu in the Tang Dynasty advocated, "without a word, you can be romantic". The meaning is not stated, which means that the author places his own thoughts and emotions in the blank content, and readers can understand it through imagination and association. Although you can make rich assumptions, in the end it is difficult to determine the details of the omitted parts, which results in hazy and ambiguous beauty.
The vacancies in literary discourse can be divided into two situations: limited vacancies and unlimited vacancies.
Restricted gaps refer to the fact that the creative subject is unable to express certain conditions, characteristics and activities of the stated object due to the limitations of its own feeling, perception or thinking, thus forming a gap in discourse. "The shadow of the lonely sail in the blue sky is gone, and only the Yangtze River can be seen flowing in the sky." [3] In these two lines of poems, due to the limitations of his own vision, the author gradually lost sight of the boat that Meng Haoran was traveling on, which was traveling further and further away. In the end, he could only Seeing the rolling water of the Yangtze River flowing eastward under the blue sky, this is a restricted vacancy. It reflects the deep friendship between the poet and Meng Haoran, so that he stood and watched for a long time and could not bear to leave.
Infinite vacancy means that the creative subject's perception of the statement object is not hindered or restricted. In order to obtain aesthetic effects, the subject deliberately fails to express clearly, thus forming a discourse vacancy. The combination of fiction and reality in Yan Shu's poem "Untitled" in the Northern Song Dynasty can better explain this point. "The oil-walled incense carts no longer meet, and the gorge clouds leave no trace to the west and east. The moon melts in the pear blossom courtyard, and the catkins pond has a light breeze. After a few days of loneliness and drinking, I was desolate and banned from smoking. Where can I reach the fish book that I want to send? The water is far away and the mountains are long. Same everywhere." This poem expresses the longing for the person you love, as well as the loneliness and loss of missing someone. "Youbixiangqi" is a gorgeous car that the person you like rides on. What is the woman's appearance, character, language and actions, personality, what kind of connection is there between her and the admirer, and why can she attract him? Infinite thoughts... The author didn't say a word about these, which gave us infinitely rich reverie. If the author explains all this clearly, it will seem obvious to the recipient, and it will feel boring. But no matter how you imagine it, the final result of your thinking will not have a clear image: Does the person you like have an oval face or a jade plate face? Whether she's warm and generous, or just shy, you don't know, but you know she'll be quite charming. This is the uncertainty of literary images, and the resulting hazy and ambiguous beauty. Different readers often have different interpretations of the meaning of literary works. On the one hand, this is due to their different personal experiences, literary literacy and analytical perspectives. On the other hand, it is also related to the vagueness and meaning of literary discourse as a whole. Diversity related. From the overall perspective of literary works, there are two main methods of conveying meaning: pure image description and image description plus thoughts and emotions.
1. Pure image description Pure image description means that a literary work only depicts actual or imagined things and their development and changes, without directly expressing the emotions and implications they evoke. Image descriptions in literary works can be the copying, processing and transformation of prototypes of things in real life, or they can be the creation of imagined things that do not exist in reality. The image world in literary works can be divided into the pure human world and the non-pure human world. The non-pure human world includes the world of pure gods and monsters, the world of pure animals, the world of pure plants, the world of non-living things, and the world of existence of two or more types of humans, gods, monsters, animals, plants or non-living things.
Copying, processing and transforming prototypes of things is relatively simple and commonly used, and requires careful selection and processing of materials. This realistic creative method creates literary models that are widely representative. Due to similar or identical implicit purposes, different writers will choose the same literary model. Even if they are literary models of the same kind, the plots, language styles and expression techniques used by the creative subjects to shape them are often unique and not repetitive. They all enrich this literary image.
The creation of literary images requires varying degrees of changes in the images of things in the real world, and even requires the creation of images that are completely different from reality. The creation of images can be the materialization of people, allowing people to have the shape, actions or movements of objects, or it can be the humanization of objects, allowing objects to have human shapes, language, actions and psychology... In short, there are so many types that it is difficult to list them all. . The creation of images requires rich imagination and association capabilities as well as strong innovation capabilities. However, these images are derived from real life and are not generated out of thin air. They all require the creative subject to have a certain amount of life accumulation. The creative subject can create a colorful world of images based on his or her own writing background, implicit purpose, and needs.
2. Image description plus thoughts and emotions Image description refers to the author's description of the social life picture and the shape of things and their development and changes in literary works. The direct expression of thoughts and emotions can be in front of the image depiction, in the middle, or behind it.
Image description in literary works needs to be achieved with the help of image discourse. Image discourse refers to the description of specific things and scenes that exist in reality or ideals. Imagery words are often concrete, vivid and thought-provoking. The image discourse in literary works expresses sensible things and scenes, and image discourse often has strong emotion or meaning. Ordinary readers often pay attention to the image and plot charm of figurative discourse. Readers with higher literary literacy not only pay attention to its vivid pictures, but also pay attention to the emotions and implications of the social life picture composed of pictures displayed in figurative discourse. one or more meanings. Different readers often have different feelings due to their own experience, knowledge and perspectives. Of course, different readers will come to roughly the same opinions on the same literary image. The same reader will also have different experiences due to differences in observation perspectives, experiences in different periods, and knowledge. In short, the interpretation of the implicit content of image discourse varies from person to person and from time to time, showing complex and changeable characteristics that are difficult to determine. Therefore, narrators and characters in literary works sometimes express emotions directly and make comments to highlight the ideological and emotional content of the article.
Because the creative subject of literary works is restricted by his or her own existing knowledge and perspective of observing problems, the thoughts and emotions directly revealed and expressed in literary works are relatively limited and one-sided. This gives readers Revelation is often partial rather than holistic and comprehensive. To some extent, it is a restriction and constraint on the reader's thinking. Under normal circumstances, the elaboration of thoughts and the venting of emotions should be natural, and should not be based on unfounded reasons or be sentimental. The direct expression of thoughts and emotions in the article has a complex impact on readers. Some thoughts and emotions are beneficial to readers and make them proactive; some are unhelpful and make people passive and depressed. Different readers have different feelings and attitudes towards the direct expression of thoughts and emotions in literary works. Some feel that it is of great benefit, while others feel that it is redundant or even disgusting. This is mainly related to the reader's acceptance level. When the reader's opinion is lower than that of the author, and when the emotion resonates with the author, it is welcomed. On the contrary, it is rejected. The partial implication of literary discourse further enriches the connotative effect of literary works, further challenges readers' acceptance of literature, further activates readers' thinking, and enhances the difficulty and interest of reading. The methods of partial implication in literary discourse are diverse and inexhaustible. The following are mainly selected for explanation.
1. Various understandings caused by the rich meaning of words.
Swiss linguist Saussure proposed that language symbols are not connected with the names of things, but with concepts and sound images. He believes that language symbols are "the whole produced by the connection of the signifier and the signified." [4] He calls the "concept" represented by the word "the signified" and the "sound image" of the word as the "signifier". ". The referents of words are relatively stable, but in specific contexts, words will have some new referents, which will lead to multiple possibilities for understanding the meaning of sentences.
"Light fell from the sky" comes from "The Testament of Summer" by British writer Thomas Nash. The words "light" and "heaven" in this sentence can have multiple referents in different contexts. , thus causing ambiguity in the understanding of the sentence:
[1] The sun, moon, and stars (meteors), these luminous celestial bodies, fall from the sky;
[2] In mythology The god Icarus had the wax on his wings melted by the sun, and his wings fell off and fell from the sky;
[3] The falcon's prey was carried up into the sky and fell into the dust exhausted;
〔4〕The gleaming swirling decorations on the tops of churches and other buildings are falling into disrepair.
......
People can draw their own opinions through reasonable imagination and association based on their own life experience and literary literacy.
2. Polysemous understanding caused by different ways of combining words.
This is mainly reflected in the language of poetry. Due to the jumping nature of poetic language, the combination of words within sentences is not so strict, and there are often incomplete sentence components. This causes us to reconstruct complete sentences. Multiple reasonable interpretations will be generated, making the meaning of the text rich and varied.
In Du Fu's "Jianghan Poetry", "The setting sun is still strong, and the autumn wind is about to subside." It contains three similar or opposite meanings. In the previous sentence, the combination of "setting sun" and "heart is still strong" can lead to three meanings: First, "Although my heart is like the setting sun, it is still strong", which is similar but opposite. Secondly, "My heart is not like the setting sun, it is still strong", which is the opposite; thirdly, "In the setting sun, my heart is still strong", this is the time and space condition for regarding "setting sun" as "heart is still strong" . The latter sentence also has these meanings. Just two sentences have such rich meaning-generating potential, which is indeed thought-provoking.
3. Express the implication through the use of figures of speech.
With the help of figures of speech, the creative subject makes the literary discourse novel and unique, but also makes it have subtext, thereby achieving the effect of meaningful meaning.
“She left the flower of her smile to me/and took away the fruit of my pain./She clapped her hands and laughed and said/she won.” [5] This is from Tagore’s “Selected Poems” In the poem, the author compares "smile" to "flower" and "pain" to "fruit". She left the flower of smile to me and took away the fruit of my pain.
Flowers represent smiles, indicating that she is kind and willing to bear the pain of others. However, flowers also symbolize transience, and pain is lasting fruit after all, which shows that she is not kind, and she also hurts others. The metaphor of image makes the character's character appear rich and contradictory.
"When I first wanted to know him, my two minds were in the same mood. When I cut the silk into a broken machine, I realized that I couldn't be a match." These two lines in "Midnight Song" use a rhetorical figure of double entendre, "Silk "It is not only a material for weaving, but also has the same pronunciation as "si", which contains the longing and admiration for the sweetheart. "Pi" is not only the "piece" of cloth, but also implies the "piece" of matching, which contains the desire to marry the one you love.
There are many other situations where figures of speech are used to express subtext, so I won’t describe them all one by one.
4. Use some expression techniques to express the hidden meaning.
The use of symbols can make the thoughts and emotions to be expressed implicit in the designed images. In this way, it can stimulate readers' imagination and association to understand the extra-image of the work.
“The blue sea is misty and misty, / The lonely sail is shining with white light!... / What is it looking for in a distant place? / What is it abandoning in its hometown?...” [6] From the poem In this line, we can see that the sail is a symbol of the poet's personality and ideals. It shows that the poet, like the sail, is floating on the vast ocean of the world. The fog obscures his direction. He is hesitant in pursuit and pursues in hesitation. This is Fan's temperament and also symbolizes the mentality of the lyrical protagonist.
Of course, other expression techniques can also be used to make literary discourse profound and thought-provoking.
5. Rely on the hidden meaning by calmly and objectively describing the appearance, words and deeds of the characters.
The charm of literary discourse does not lie in telling everything that is known and exhausting, so that people can see everything at a glance. Such articles lack tension and are difficult to produce lasting charm. Therefore, many authors encapsulate the thoughts and emotions they want to express in calm and objective descriptions, leaving the rich overtones for readers to figure out and comprehend.
"...He didn't answer, but said to the counter, 'Warm two bowls of wine and ask for a plate of fennel beans.' Then he handed out nine coins. They deliberately shouted loudly, 'You must You stole someone else's things again!" Kong Yiji opened his eyes and said, "How can you accuse someone of innocence out of thin air..." What innocence? I saw you stealing the He family's book the day before yesterday." Kong Yiji said. His face turned red, veins appeared on his forehead, and he argued, "Stealing books cannot be considered stealing... Stealing books! ... Can the things done by scholars be considered stealing?" [7] For Kong Yiji The character traits of Kong Yiji are not directly explained in the article, but there is a description of Kong Yiji's words and deeds and the reactions of the people around him. From this, we can see his pedantry as an intellectual and his low social status, and we can also see the indifference of the onlookers around him. Selfish, but at the same time, one can also feel Kong Yiji's embarrassment, shame, sadness, desolation, loneliness and self-righteousness. The insights we have come from the narratives and descriptions in the article are well-founded and not just castles in the air. If the author wrote out Kong Yiji's mood and character traits one by one, the original work would no longer be thought-provoking and intriguing.
6. Convey the implicit meaning through description of scenery.
In order to express their own thoughts and emotions or to heighten the atmosphere, the creative subject often blends emotions with the scene and blends theory with the scene, so that the literary discourse reaches the state of blending scenes and concepts, that is, forming an artistic conception, which is better than Simply lyrical and freehand is more vivid and chewy.
"When night comes, everything is quiet, / I can only hear the gentle singing of the stream. / The bright moon sheds its light, / Covering everything around it with silver." [8] Beautiful The poem not only displays the tranquility and beauty of the night through vision and hearing, but also reveals the poet's love for nature and his comfortable and indifferent mood.
The method of literary discourse implication is flexible, changeable, and constantly developing, and it depends on our continuous exploration and summary in practice.
Literary discourse implications will form the uncertainty, ambiguity, and multi-interpretation of literary images. This is the problem of literature's "indeterminate domain" raised by phenomenologist and esthetician Roman Ingarden. He said: "When a literary work describes a certain object or the environment of the object, it cannot fully explain it, and sometimes it does not explain it comprehensively. Explain that this object has or does not have a certain nature. Every thing and every character, especially the development of things and the fate of characters, can never be fully determined through language description. We cannot use limited sentences. The infinitely rich nature of an object is expressed. "The careful setting of "indeterminate areas" can make literary discourse profound and thought-provoking, and gain eternal artistic charm.
Of course, the implication construction of literary discourse is often not the sole use of a certain implication technique, but often a clever combination of several methods. There are no certain rules or methods for using literary discourse implication methods. The key is to pay attention to the accumulation of literary literacy in daily life. When it comes to creation, use it flexibly, accumulate accumulated knowledge, and introduce new ideas.