（英语语言文学专业论文）叶芝诗歌中歧义现象的研究.pdf

v 摘 要 叶芝，爱尔兰著名的诗人，剧作家和评论家，是二十世纪初的西方诗坛的泰斗。他 以“始终富于灵感的诗歌”和“高度的艺术形式表达了整个民族的精神”成为无可置疑 的诗歌巨匠。由于其对世界文学卓越的贡献，长期以来叶芝都是文学评论的焦点。前人 对叶芝从很多角度都做过详尽和系统的研究，比如诗人的生平，诗人的经历对其诗歌创 作的影响，叶芝的象征系统等。作者在研读诗人的众多作品后发现叶芝的诗歌时常笼罩 在歧义的面纱中，散发着朦胧的香气。因此，本文将就叶芝作品中的歧义现象做详尽分 析, 希望为科研者提出新的研究方向。 前人对歧义做过很多定义。本文依据前人的研究提出：歧义是同一环境的两个或更 多涵义并列冲突所产生的一种不确定，难决定与晃动的特质与状态。就诗歌而言，这里 的环境可以指整首诗也可以指一个小的语言成分（如：限定词，修饰词等） 。 本文从三个层面- - - - - - 语义、句法和修辞，分析叶芝诗歌中的歧义现象。其中每一个 层面单独为一章节进行讲述。第一章展现了双关韵、对比韵与反讽韵产生歧义的机制； 第二章分析了叶芝诗歌中一些相关的句法成分是如何产生歧义的；第三章分析了叶芝诗 歌中的象征符号与结尾问句产生歧义的原因。基于以上分析，结论部分提出叶芝诗歌中 的歧义想象应给予应有的关注。 关键词：叶芝 歧义 韵 结尾问句 iv abstract william butler yeats, a poet, dramatist and critic, for his great contribution to the world literature, has long been the focus of academic studies and researches. he is an incontestable poetry giant for “ his always inspired poetry” and his “ highly artistic form which gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation.” most previous studies on yeats concentrated on various aspects including yeats s life, the influence of his life on his works, his symbolic system, and so on. the author, after the close reading of the yeats s works find that his poems are always veiled with ambiguity. therefore, this dissertation attempts to research ambiguity in yeats s poems in hope of providing a new perspective on the study of this literary giant. scholars have already defined ambiguity in various ways. on the basis of previous studies, this thesis puts forward its definition of ambiguity. it is the state of uncertainty, undecidability and oscillation generated by the double or probably multi- meanings of the same environment. the environment, as far as a poem concerned, can be as large as a whole poem and as small as a linguistic element (e.g. a determiner, a modifier and so on) this thesis explores ambiguity in yeats s poems from three levels: semantic, syntactic and rhetoric levels with analysis on each level forming a chapter. chapter one presents the mechanism of pun- rhyme, antithesis- rhyme and irony- rhyme causing ambiguity. chapter two focuses on syntactic elements generating ambiguity in yeats s poems. chapter three analyzes ambiguity from rhetorical perspective. this section focuses on how symbol and end question contribute to ambiguity in yeats s poems. according to the three chapters, the conclusion part proposes that ambiguity in yeats s poems should be given due attention. key words: w.b. yeats, ambiguity, rhyme, ending question iii 学位论文原创性声明 本人所提交的学位论文 a m b i g u i t y i n w . b . y e a t s s p o e t r y ，是在导师的指导下， 独立进行研究工作所取得的原创性成果。除文中已经注明引用的内容外，本论文不包含 任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写过的研究成果。对本文的研究做出重要贡献的个人 和集体，均已在文中标明。 本声明的法律后果由本人承担。 论文作者（签名） ： 指导教师确认（签名） ： 年 月 日 年 月 日 学位论文版权使用授权书 本学位论文作者完全了解河北师范大学有权保留并向国家有关部门或机构送交学 位论文的复印件和磁盘，允许论文被查阅和借阅。本人授权河北师范大学可以将学位论 文的全部或部分内容编入有关数据库进行检索，可以采用影印、缩印或其它复制手段保 存、汇编学位论文。 （保密的学位论文在 年解密后适用本授权书） 论文作者（签名） ： 指导教师（签名） ： 年 月 日 年 月 日 1 introduction as a great irish poet, dramatist and critic in the 20th century, william butler yeats (1865 1939) holds a high position in the world literature. he was the first irishman to be awarded a nobel prize in literature for “ inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation” 1 he impressed the later generation by his obsessed love with maud gonne, active participation in the ireland s struggle for independence and the elaborated poetry with always- advancing styles. yeats drew the essence from romanticism, estheticism, mysticism and symbolism, all of which contributed a lot to his unique poetic style. helen vendler, the prestigious professor in harvard university said, “yeats style was the most important of his qualities, since it was what would make the poems last.” 2 his history is the history of his time. yeats was born in june 1865 in a painter s family at sandymount. in his childhood, he lived in his mother s hometown county sligo, a place which later became the setting of many of yeats poems. the old irish way of life and folklore deeply influenced child yeats. although yeats was educated in dublin, he missed sligo very much for the fascinating legends and the beautiful scenery there. he had a strong passion for celtic legends, so he read many irish poems. in 1884, under the influence of his father, he entered an art school in dublin. however, in 1886, he left the school and devoted whole- heartedly to poetry. the year of 1889 was to yeats an unusual one, for it is in this year that he published his first poetry anthology the wandering of oisin and other poems and it is in just this year that he met maud gonne, who pervades yeats s life and poetry and brings to yeats endless pain. the unique irish color of both theme and language in this collection generated great interest in readers. from 1889 to 1903, yeats has so many interests and activities just like a frenzy man “ beating on every door in the hotel in an attempt to find his own room” 3 he made acquaintance with lady gregory, a woman of much cultivation and generosity of spirit and a lot of well- known poets such as aesthetics oscar wilde and morris. during this period, he found rhmyers club and irish literary society, proposed to maud gonne but was refused, and published the wind among the reeds. meanwhile, he went to paris several times and 2 learnt symbolism which later he applied consciously to his poetry. yeats together with lady gregory and john synge opened the abbey theater in 1904. at the age of fifty- two in 1917, yeats married georgie hyde- lees. the year yeats awarded a nobel prize for literature pushed him to a climax of his literary career and made ireland receive m ore attention than before. he developed an interest in automatic writing in his late years and was more concerned about philosophical themes. yeats died on january 28th 1939 in france. starting in the romantic tradition and finishing as a matured modernist poet, yeats s poetic creation can be divided into three periods. young yeats mainly concerned about celtic legends, local folktales, and stories of the heroic age in irish history. poems in this period is full of strong rhyme, tender beauty, dreamy and fuzzy quality, mystic color, expressing melancholy, passive and self- indulgent feelings. his early poetic creation includes poems published from 1883 in dublin university review to the wind among the reeds. the representative works is “ the lake isle of innisfree” . it is an emotional and spiritual escape for the poet, and shows yeats s eagerness of getting a life of peace and simplicity. the first two decades of the 20th century turned yeats from a traditional poet to a modernist one marking the poet s second period. the beloved maud gonne married a major john mcbride in 1903 which was a total disaster to him. just as the situation predicted in one of his poems “ the lover mourns the loss of love” , the noble love returned to him vainness. besides maud gonne s marriage, a series of real- world events intruded to accelerate and complicate the emergence of a new phrase. the easter rising and the anglo- irish war of 1919- 21and the civil war that followed posed a particular acute challenge to his new certainty in the power of imagination. disappointed as he was, the romantic, tender, pensive and platonic love was ebbing. however, lady gregory encouraged him a lot in both his poetic creation and dramatic creation. the coole park provided yeats with a place where he got the soul to rest. the nobleness yeats s marriage to gorge hyde- lees, twenty- years his junior, seems quite a decisive rebound after his second proposal to maud gonne and next to her daughter iseult. the marriage later turned out to bring yeats new power and inspiration in poetic creation. so the gloomy uncertainty and sense of creative barrenness prevailing in the poems of 1913- 17 was replaced by the renewed joy and celebration of imagination which can 3 be seen from his 1919 edition of the wilde swans at coole. in all, yeats s mature period saw him abandon the pre- raphaelite character of his early work. his style then is social ironical, supple, muscular in rhymes, both simple and rich, colloquial and formal, metaphysical and symbolic, all of which proves that yeats is on his way to a modernist poet. works in this period includes mainly in the seven woods, the green helmet and other poems, responsibilities, the wild swan at coole. during the last period yeats gets new inspiration from the mystical system he works out for himself under the influence of spiritualism. yeats developed a tough，complex and symbolical style. the representative poems are sailing to byzantium， leda and the swan and monuments of unaging intellect. yeats attracts much attention among critics because of his remarked achievements. critics on yeats diverted in yeats life time. however, two events after the poet s death laid foundation for his huge fame in critical circles of literature. the first event is t.s. eliot s speech “ the poetry of w.b. yeats” in june 1940, in which he explicitly pointed out that yeats was one of the greatest poet, whether in english or in any other language he could evaluate. before that time, his evaluation towards yeats s works showed no consistence. the second event is a special issue on yeats published in the winter of 1941 in southern review. during the first few decades after yeats s death, studies on the poet are mainly biographies. the representative one is joseph hone s w.b. yeats: 1865- 1939. first published in 1942, the book recorded all the relevant records, manuscripts, and letters of yeats. r.f.froster provides the reader with the two- volume biography w.b.yeats: a life (1997, 2003). richard ellmann s classic study yeats: the man and the mask (1987) weaves together life and works into a critical biography. those biographies and many others together with yeats s own autobiography provide an important resource for researchers. besides biographies, books documenting yeats s works appeared in large numbers. louis macneice s the poetry of w.b. yeats, 1914 is an introductory book on yeats s works. the collected poems of w.b. yeats is published by macmillan company is also a book well documenting the poet s works. the variorum edition of the poems of w.b.yeats edited by peter allt is an authoritative book in this area. there are many works on yeats s mysticism. peter ure s towards a mythology: studies in 4 the poetry of w.b. yeats focuses on mythologies in yeat s poems with a vision as its reference. in china, scholars do many researches on yeats s mystic philosophy. du ping with his dualistic opposition in transcending self gives details on yeats s correct and incorrect interpretations of oriental mysticism. fu hao, one of the prominent scholars in china doing research over yeats, wrote essay on yeats s mysticism- - - - - - yeats s mystic philosophy and the influence of his poetic creation. from 1970s, studies on yeats tended to be diversified. marjorie perloff with his rhyme and meaning in the poetry of yeats presents to readers that rhyme is an important sound feature in yeats s poems and how rhyme “ does” for the typical yeats poem. he mentioned that yeats s poems contained three types of rhyme involving disparity (antithesis- rhyme, irony- rhyme and pun- rhyme). this classification actually gives the author great inspiration in composing the first chapter. dr. perloff, though, never touch upon ambiguity in yeats s poems, offers the author basic elements (i.e. pun- rhyme, antithesis- rhyme and irony- rhyme) to ground her argument. joseph adams, however, went further in the ambiguity direction with his yeats and masks of syntax. according to adams, syntactic mask is formed when one same unity has two mutually exclusive syntactic alternatives. the mask thus become an odd contradictory block stuck into a normal flow of discourse.4though adams didn t mention ambiguity clearly, he presents to readers yeats s poems are teeming with syntactic mask. the author further proposes that the mask is actually a state of uncertainty and undecidability which are actually in line with ambiguity. lee zimmerman noted that yeats is a poet “ singing amid uncertainty” . in his “ singing amid uncertainty: yeats s closing questions” , he elaborated on how anti- closure- - - - - - a device characterizing yeats s poems, exerts its influence on expressing uncertainty. on the basis of zimmerman s studies, the author noticed that end questions bring yeats s poems to a state of thematic irresolution and ambiguity. ambiguity is typical in the field of artistic creation. art is the kingdom of ambiguity, and poetry is of no exception. it could seemingly point to this yet actually mean that. or it may refer to either this or that. so the meaning of poetry is flowers in the mist- - - beautiful yet untouchable. that effect is actually what ambiguity brings to readers. 5 in china, many scholars do research on ambiguity. hu heping is one of those. he published his fuzzy poetics in 2005. though he uses the word “ fuzzy” , the author can hardly see the difference between empson s ambiguity and his fuzziness, because in his book, he said “ in terms of poetic ambiguity, the one who gave the most thorough analysis is empson.” 5 nevertheless, hu made further development after having absorbed the essence from new criticism, cultural poetics and historical poetics and. he proposes that metaphor, symbol, irony, paradox work with their respective mechanism to engender ambiguity. hu also claims that the essence of ambiguity is multi- meaning, uncertain, undecidable and irresolvable. different scholars have different definitions of ambiguity. (1) “ ambiguity is the property of being ambiguous, where a word, sign, symbol, phrase, sentence, or any other form used for communication, is called ambiguous if it can be interpreted in more than one way.” 6 (2) “ ambiguity is a sentence with two or more propositions” leech defined ambiguity from the perspective of semantics. (1981:112) (3) “ ambiguity is defined as expressions, which have more than one meaning.” (david, 2003:464) david john wilkinson, one of the foremost experts and authors on ambiguity. (4) another scholar who made remarkable contribution to ambiguity is empson with his seven types of ambiguity, which for the first time in the history of western literary discussed ambiguity systematically. he refined and redefined “ ambiguity” and finally gives it a definition as “ any verbal sense, however slight, which gives room for alternative reactions to the same piece of language” in his 1947 edition of seven types of amgiguity. the author, through summarization proposes ambiguity is the state of uncertainty, undecidability and oscillation generated by the conflicting and juxtaposing double or probably multi- meanings of the same environment. the environment, as far as a poem concerned, can be as large as a whole poem and as small as a linguistic element (e.g. a determiner, a modifier and so on) there are many other scholars doing research over yeats, but few paid attention to the ambiguity aspect of yeats s poetry. therefore, this thesis will explore ambiguity presented in yeats s poems. 6 chapter one ambiguity on semantic level this chapter focuses on ambiguity in yeats s poetry from semantic perspective. it mainly deals with three types of rhyme words in yeats poems causing ambiguity. they are pun- rhyme, antithesis- rhyme and irony- rhyme. a. ambiguity produced by pun- rhyme a pun is an interesting form of word play which causes ambiguity by the deliberately misuse of homophonical, homographical, polysemic, or metaphorical language.7 this is consistent with empson s third type of ambiguity - - - - - - “ a verbal matter, occurs when two ideas, which are connected only by being both relevant in the context, can be given in one word simultaneously.” 8 pun actually is a rhetoric technique. but this section mainly concerns rhymes which are at the same time puns. so this thesis puts pun in semantic level for discussion and brings marjorie perloff s pun- rhyme to spotlight. marjorie perloff claims “ pun- rhyme, as to, occurs when one rhyme word assumes, under the influence of its rhyming partner, a secondary meaning quite different form its primary meaning in the logical structure of the poem; this type of rhyme furnishes us with the clearest example of the way in which rhyme deforms meaning in the orientation toward the neighboring word .” 9 for example, the following rhyme from “ crazy jane on god” (vp 280): i had wild jack for a lover; though like a road that men pass over my body makes no moan thy rhyme “ loverover” here not only suggests that “ l over” is one who passes “ over” the body but also shows that jack to jane is a past- time story. they have broken up. so both meanings of “ over” are exploited here: “ across” and “ finished” . the pun here becomes 7 ambiguous by the way the successive ideas act in the mind and by the way one must attempt to find each in the other. in “ among school children” (vp 230), a poem in his mature period, “ better to smile on all that smile, and show there is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow” , “ show” can be seen as a verb or a noun. the uncertainty of its word speech is up to cause different understandings. if “ show” is a verb, then the existence of scarecrow is the object of the verb “ show” . however, when “ show” takes on the second meaning as a noun, then a “ scarecrow” is, in the final analysis, just “ show” . which is the ultimate answer? ambiguous. another example offers the least difficulty is from “ crazy jane and the bishop