Xu Wen – författare

This book explores linguistic representations and cultural conceptualizations of the relationship between time and space in ancient China, as expressed by the YiChing.The YiChing, an ancient Chinese divination manual based on hexagrams, is one of the oldest of the Chinese classics and a foundational text for the Confucian and Daoist philosophical traditions. Its hexagrams represent the internal logic of the world or universe as a dynamic whole, alternating the processes of events based on the conceptual unity of space and time and their quantification.This book is the first in-depth examination of time and space and their quantification in the YiChing from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. Through detailed analysis of motion and life metaphors, it argues that space and time, which in turn shapes how quantification is expressed, is a unified concept in China.Offering distinctive Chinese perspectives, this insightful study deals with unsolved issues from experimental research in cognitive and psychological science to further expand the existing linguistic and cultural research field. The book compares the Chinese conceptualization of the unity of space and time with an asymmetric conceptualization of space and time in the West, making an original contribution to the study of space, time and number in language and cognition, and to the understanding of the history of Chinese thought.

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.