The Metaphorization of Shanghai in Wang Anyi’s Novel “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow”.

Abstract

This article is devoted to the study of the metaphorization of the city as a cultural and semiotic space on the example of Shanghai in Wang Anyi’s novel “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow” (王安忆。《长恨歌》, 1995). The purpose of the work is to analyze the potential of figurative and cognitive urbanistic transfers in the process of metaphor formation in artistic discourse based on the example of a particular city and to determine the internal form of a metaphor in its structural and stylistic design. The relevance of the chosen problem is determined by the fact that metaphors act as a discursive emotive-evaluative tool that has a significant impact on the perception of a literary text. Such basic artistic and metaphorical models as “city – painting”, “city – music”, “city – architecture”, “city – woman”, “city – text”, “garden city”, “city – machine (mechanism)”, “city – smell”, “beehive city/anthill”, and so on. A metaphor as a stylistic and discursive component of the text in all analyzed models acts as an objectified form of nomination of the phenomenon of the city, due to which it is possible to know and understand the essence of its existence in human culture. It has been proven that the cognitive metaphor is able to translate the mental structures of a particular ethnoculture and can also act as a productive tool and technique for the intermediate poetics of artistic discourse and style, using the sign systems of various types of art, synthetically processing them and verbalizing them in the text. The role of cognitive-urban metaphor in the novel is considered as modeling historical, social and cultural identity at the artistic level, as well as performing an explanatory function of an important period for Chinese history to the reader.