After the appearance of the book Metaphors We Live By written by Lakoff and Johnson in 1980, numerous attention has been shifted from the traditional rhetoric Study of metaphors to the cognitive one. Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory has been one of the cognitive poetics research since the 20^th century. Domestic scholars have also begun to shift their attention to the combination of cognitive poetics theory and Chinese literary works. Related researches on the combination of Chinese classical poetry and the conceptual metaphor theory, as an important theory of cognitive poetics, are quite rich. Since the first national seminar on cognitive poetics in China was held, the research team has grown continuously. Scholar Xiong Muqing initiated the advocacy of localization of cognitive poetics, emphasizing the integration of cognitive poetics and Chinese elements. Under his advocacy, there are more and more studies on the integration of cognitive poetics and Chinese literature, especially in the research of Tang poetry and Song Ci.

Li Qingzhao, a dazzling star on the Qilu land, had an important position and far-reaching influence on the Chinese Ci circle. She was so extinguished in a male-oriented society at that time, and she had created so many Ci-poems, fully showing her excellently literary attainment. Her distinctive style of Ci-poems was honored as “Yi’an Style” and she herself was once regarded as the “pioneer and founder of Ci-Poetry”. Therefore, people’s studies on her ci-poems have never stopped and have undergone a process of constant changes. For a long time, especially after the liberation, literary criticism focused more on analyzing and researching the ideological and social significance of the writer's works, and Li Ching-chao's research also failed to jump out of this mentality. Researches about Li Ching-chao were often on analyzing the so-called social value of her Ci-poetry, most of which inevitably bore the influence of the social and political ideas at that time. After entering the 1990s, the academic world was more inclined to think calmly. Scholars started to jump out of the pure ideological analysis of Li’s Ci-poetry, and further explored her Ci-poetry in depth from the perspectives of artistry, comparability and overall comprehensiveness. Then, under the guidance of the conceptual metaphor theory, cognitive researches of Li Ching-chao’s Ci-poetry increasingly emerge. Though studies on Yi’an ci-poetry in terms of the theory of conceptual metaphor is vigorous, but studies on the orientational metaphors in Li’s ci-poems are few, leaving much space for later scholars and future generation.Under this circumstance, the writer of this thesis, under the guidance of conceptual metaphor theory and cognitive poetic theory, tries to explore the translation methods of orientational metaphor in Li Ching-chao’s Ci-poetry. As a treasure of Chinese Ci-culture, Li Ching-chao’s Ci-poetry is an important bridge for cross-cultural communication and the spread of Chinese culture. By analyzing two translation versions of Xu Yuanchong and Mao Yumei, this thesis tries to explore some orientational metaphors in Li’s ci-poetry and find out related translation methods in order to make a further understanding of the Li Ching-chao and her excellent attainment.

2. 研究的基本内容与方案

Main contents:

This paper will be divided into four parts, the first chapter is the introduction, which includes the research background, significance, objective, methodology and the paper structure. The second chapter is about the literature review on orientational metaphor and previous study on Li Ching-chao’s Ci-poetry. The first part in this chapter will focus on the introduction of orientational metaphor. Large attention will be paid to the overseas and domestic study on it. The second part is about the previous studies on Li Ching-chao’s Ci-poetry. Chapter three is about the translation analysis of orientational metaphors from two aspects. One is on the vertical orientation, and the other is on the horizontal orientation. The analysis of vertical orientation will mainly include words like “up” and “down”, while the horizontal contains words like “left”, “right”, “front”, “back” and “middle”. All of the analysis will be based on the translation version of Xu Yuanchong. By exploring his version, the writer of this paper looks forward to finding out some translation techniques of orientational metaphors in Li’s Ci-poetry. The final part is about the conclusion of the whole paper, and research findings, limitations and suggestions will be concluded.

Research objective:

By taking the cognitive approach to study orientational metaphors in Li Ching-chao’s Ci-poetry under the framework of conceptual metaphor theory, this thesis has the following objectives:

1 Identify the orientational metaphors in Li Ching-chao’s Ci-poetry;

2 Classify those metaphors and elaborate the realization of these metaphors in Li Ching-chao’s poetry;