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Paper Title (Use Style: Paper Title) Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 233 3rd International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences and Humanities (ICCESSH 2018) A Cognitive Poetic Analysis into the Translation of Yi Poetry Illustrating with Jidi Majia’s Poems in “Words of Fire”* Yujuan Feng School of Foreign Languages Southwest Minzu University Chengdu, China Abstract—With the development of cognitive science, the followed by a series of subsequent national and international discipline of cognitive poetics has been established. And a great conferences afterwards, has witnessed the rapid development deal of research has been done on Chinese and foreign of that comparatively new discipline. Ever since then, literature works, especially Chinese ancient poems, but little scholars from home and abroad have done a great deal of concern is paid to the domain of poetry by Chinese ethnic research on Chinese and foreign literature works, especially minorities. Therefore, this article intends to take the theory of Chinese ancient poems. But it is a pity that little concern is cognitive poetics as the cut-in point, and endeavors to provide paid to the domain of poetry by Chinese ethnic minorities, a unique perspective and paradigm for the study of the not to mention the contrastive analysis between the translation of literary works for Chinese ethnic minorities. translation and original texts. Therefore, this article intends Keywords—cognitive poetics; Yi Poetry; translation to take the theory of cognitive poetics as the cut-in point, and endeavors to provide a unique perspective and paradigm for the study of the translation of literary works for Chinese I. INTRODUCTION ethnic minorities. The Yi people have been in the forefront of Chinese ethnic minorities in modern poetic creation, which has II. LITERATURE REVIEW attracted great attention from international literary and academic world, and led to the extensive research from A. Development of Cognitive Poetics multiple perspectives. As the leading figures of Cognitive Poetics is a new subject combining linguistics contemporary minority literary circles, the Yi poets, and literature for interdisciplinary research, which began in represented by Jidi Majia and Aku Wuwu, have produced a the 1970s during the cognitive turn of literary research. large number of popular and influential narrative poems as Professor Reuven Tsur of the Tel Aviv University, Israel, is well as poem collections, such as “Words of Fire – Poems by one of the pioneers in applying academic findings in Jidi Majia”, “I, Leopard”, “Coyote Traces: Aku Wuwu's cognitive science to literary research, and his early works, Poetic Sojourn in America”, “Tiger Traces”, etc.. Moreover, “Toward a Theory of Cognitive Poetics”[1], together with the Yi poetry has appealed to a lot of overseas sinologists, the modified edition “Toward a Theory of Cognitive Poetics: including Denis Mair and Mark Bender, who have long Second, Expanded and Updated Edition”[2], is recognized as focused on and devoted themselves to translation of the Yi the beginning of cognitive poetic study, while “Cognitive literature. Therefore, it is fair to say that the Yi poetry has Poetics: An Introduction” by Peter Stockwell from provided a model of cultural communication not only for the University of Nottingham is well recognized as a milestone Yi nationality, but also for other Chinese minority groups in in this field[3]. For this new interdisciplinary subject, the world. Professor Reuven Tsur and Peter Stockwell name it In recent years, with the development of cognitive cognitive poetics, while some scholars call it cognitive science, especially that of cognitive linguistics, there is a stylistics. If the target of the research is concentrated on universally recognized cognitive turn in the field of narration, it is also termed as cognitive narratology. Tsur traditional literary criticism, as the result of which emerges extends the research findings of cognitive science to the the discipline of cognitive poetics. The first National study of the relationship between literary structures and Conference for Cognitive Poetics held in 2008 in China, effects, and reiterates that his literary criticism does not intend to replace any traditional literary criticism, but *This paper is supported by the “Teaching Reform Project of SMU” attempts to find the answer to the problems which cannot be (Number: 2012YB10), “Projects for Basic Scientific Research Funds in settled by the traditional literary approaches. Central Colleges and Universities of SMU”(Number: 13SQN40), and “National College Students Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training A large portion of research on cognitive poetics remains, Program of SMU”(A Cognitive Poetic Study of the Translation of Yi's currently, in the domain of Tang and Song Poems, with a Contemporary Poetry; Number: 201810656046). Copyright © 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). 914 Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 233 small portion on English poetry and literary works, such as important goals of cognitive poetics is to bridge the gap “A Cognitive Approach to Tang and Song Poems” (2011) [4], between the value of humanity and trifling stylistic “An Interpretation of ‘Mooring By Maple Bridge at Night’ approaches, targeting at defamiliarization rather than de- from Perspective of Cognitive Poetics” (2014) [5], “On the automation [1]. His description of conventional cognitive Multi-dimensional Techniques of Cognitive Poetic Analysis: processing mainly comes from the findings of some Illustrated with Shylock’s Speech in The Merchant of cognitive psychologists, with Ulrich Neisser playing the Venice” (2014)[6], “The Multimodal Metonymy-metaphor most important part. Tsur’s research method is usually Representation of ANGER in Jimmy’s Narrative Picture divided into the following three steps: Books: a Cognitive Poetic Perspective” (2016) [7], and so on. Therefore, the study of diversified texts will be the inevitable Firstly, to describe the conventional cognitive processing. trend of cognitive poetics in the future, and specifically, the Secondly, to describe how poetry modifies conventional application of cognitive poetics to the analysis of translation cognitive processing. versions will become the focus of research due to its great academic value and significance in promoting Chinese Finally, to study the subsequent reorganization and literature and culture. literary effects based on different principles. B. Influence of Yi Poetry Represented by Jidi Majia B. Figure-ground Theory Jidi Majia has been in the forefront of Yi modern poetry The theoretical methods involved in cognitive poetics ever since the cry of "I am Yi people" in the early 1980s. include: deixis, cognitive grammar, metaphor, schema theory, Moreover, he is the leading figure not only in Yi poetry possible world theory, mental space theory, text world theory, circle, but also in Chinese Minority Literature. His 30 years situation framework theory, and so on. Most of the of high productivity and creativity in poetry writing guides theoretical foundations in “ Cognitive Poetics: An Yi modern poetry to the mainstream direction, which attracts Introduction” are based on cognitive linguistics and more attention to the Yi nationality, Yi culture, geographical cognitive psychology, such as the cognitive grammar theory features of Yi region, modern Yi writers, etc.. of Ronald Langacker, especially the figure-ground theory. Being one of core theories of the language system, figure- As a famous poet, writer and calligrapher, Jidi Majia is ground theory can be used to re-evaluate the core concepts of not only a famous contemporary representative of Chinese literary features and styles, which further consists of ethnic groups, but also an international poet with extensive dominance, stylistic deviance, foregrounding, and so on. influence, and more than 20 of his poet collections have been published home and abroad. “Words of Fire – Poems by Jidi The figure-ground theory was first put forward by the Majia” is a selected poetry collection translated by the Danish psychologist Rubin in 1915 and then adopted by American sinologist and poet Denis Mair, which pours Gestalt Psychology to study the way of perception and history and national culture into the world and integrates describe the manner of space organization. Gestalt deep ethnic reflection into the poetic language[8]. That’s psychologists believe that the perceptual field can always be exactly the reason why this translated version of poetry divided into two parts – the figure and the ground. "Figure" collection is chosen as the target text for this research. refers to the salience in a cognitive concept or perception – the focus part of attention; while "ground" is the part to highlight figure. When we observe an object in the III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES IN COGNITIVE POETICS surroundings, we usually regard this object as the salient figure in the perceptual field, taking the environment as the A. Contrast between Cognitive Poetics and Traditional ground. Let’s take the following classic picture to illustrate: Literary Criticism Cognitive poetics is an interdisciplinary approach to literary research with the tool of cognitive science, trying to solve the problem of how literary language is constrained by human information processing. It requires a combination of the tool
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