Chris Sinha - Böcker

The biological and neurological capacity to symbolize, and the products of behavioral, cognitive, sociocultural, linguistic, and technological uses of symbols (symbolism), are fundamental to every aspect of human life. The Oxford Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution explores the origins of our characteristically human abilities - our ability to speak, create images, play music, and read and write. The book investigates how symbolization evolved in human evolution and how symbolism is expressed across the various areas of human life. The field is intrinsically interdisciplinary - considering findings from fossil studies, scientific research from primatology, developmental psychology, and of course linguistics.Written by world leading experts, thirty-eight topical chapters are grouped into six thematic parts that respectively focus on epistemological, psychological, anthropological, ethological, linguistic, and social-technological aspects of human symbolic evolution. The handbook presents an in-depth but comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of the of the state of the art in the science of human symbolic evolution. This work will be of interest to academics and students active in all fields contributing to the study of human evolution.

This book explores metonymic patterns in Li Bai’s poetry from a cognitive poetic perspective and offers new insights into the use of metonymies in poetry more widely. Focusing more specifically on Annotations to the Annals of the Complete Collection of Li Bai compiled by A Qi, it sheds light on the poetic style of one of the most celebrated poets of China’s Tang Dynasty (610-907 AD).Adopting corpus-based and introspection methods, this book builds a metonymy identification procedure that takes into account the social and cultural context and the stylistic characteristics of Tang poetry, classifies the metonymies into different categories, and examines their roles and functions. The author reveals how Li Bai’s metonymies reflect the poet’s evolution as his style shifts from romanticism to realism. She also reflects on how they act as a lens through which readers can learn about hierarchical structures, wine, dress and agriculture in the Tang Dynasty. Approaching Li Bai’s poetry from a fresh angle, this volume contributes to the study of classical Chinese literature and offers implications for the appreciation, translation and teaching of Li Bai’s poetry.