Thematology studies the different treatments of the same theme, theme, plot and characters by different writers of different times and nationalities, focusing on the external means and forms of the research object.

General thematic research focuses on a point (the presentation of individual themes), while thematic research focuses on a line or even a surface.

Take the study of Don Juan, a famous literary image, as an example to illustrate the difference between them.

The overall theme research focuses on analyzing the character and thought of this image. For example, it is concluded that Byron's long poem Don Juan is a satire on British bourgeois society.

In the special study of comparative literature, we first pay attention to the original source of this legendary figure, and then try to find out all the writers and works who have written the character Don Juan, so as to outline the evolution track of this literary image.

The Legend of Don Juan: From Origin to Romantic Age (1929). Firstly, the author verified that the first work to create the image of Don Juan was the play "The Seducer of Seville, or the Stone Man" written by Spanish dramatist Molina 1630. Then list the works of writers who later described Don Juan:

Italian playwrights Bertau and Cicconi, Frenchman Moliere, Gao Naiyi and Italian Godoni. In the romantic era, there are more writers describing Don Juan: German Hoffman's musical novel, Byron's long poem Don Juan, Pushkin's tragedy The Stone Man (1830), Dumas' fantasy drama Don Juan in Malan or The Fall of Angels (1837) and so on.

In addition, Miao Sai, Gaudi and Bernard Shaw have also written works on similar themes.

There are even musical works-from Mozart's (1787) to Strauss's (1887).

But the purpose of Bev is not to compile a bibliography of works featuring Don Juan for us. His aim is to fully show this character called "Don Juan Spirit" and let readers see that the same character has been painted with different colors and given different personalities in different countries and different writers. .

There are timid and cunning tempters, cynical loafers who kill people to open a road or cover their retreat, lovers who care nothing, romantic dreamers, pursuers of false ideals, miners looking for Jin Gangzuan in wells, and people who are very smart, brave in temptation, brave in possession and never satisfied with enjoyment.

This kind of research is helpful for us to understand how writers of different nationalities and different times deal with the same image, so as to have a deeper understanding of the different styles and achievements of different writers, the respective characteristics of different national literatures, and the interaction and influence between national literatures.

The study of philology mainly includes the study of motif, theme, theme, situation, image and rhetoric.

Second, the motif research.

The motif in thematology usually refers to the basic human behavior and spiritual phenomena that appear repeatedly in literary works, as well as human concepts of the surrounding world, such as emotion, love and hate, where you are going, time and space, oceans and mountains.

The motif is closely related to the types of characters. There are two types of characters:

The first kind. Some characters in myths and legends have become the concrete embodiment of a motif, and their names have also become synonymous with the motif.

For example, in Greek mythology, antigone, who volunteered to wander with his father, became a concrete embodiment of the motif of loving his parents and self-sacrifice. Oedipus became the representative of Oedipus.

There are also such figures in China literature, such as Dayu, Gong Yu and Jingwei. At the mention of their names, all their personalities have been filtered out, leaving only some motifs such as "public forgetting private", "determination and will" and "perseverance".

The difference between China and the West is that:

Those characters in the west often appear directly in the literary works of later European countries, and are constantly portrayed as protagonists, endowed with different zeitgeist, personal qualities and characteristics by different authors, thus providing excellent research materials for the theme research.

This kind of character type of China is rarely directly reproduced as the protagonist in later literary works.

The second category is the literary image born from the motif.

Such as Abalone and Grandet from the motif of "greed" and Othello from the motif of "jealousy".

Zhuge Liang, the representative figure of the motif of "wisdom" in China literature, and the matchmaker of the motif of "matchmaking" also belong to this type.

The study of motif can be roughly divided into the following two specific aspects:

1, pure motif research

This kind of research can be confined to the framework of national literature and national literature, and it can also cross the boundaries between nationalities and ethnic groups to clean up and study the myths and legends of various ethnic groups in traditional literature.

Ten Topics of China Ancient Literature written by Chinese young scholar Wang Li (Liaoning Normal University) belongs to this kind of research. The author sorts out the voluminous ancient documents in China and sums up ten basic "themes". In fact, most of these "themes" are motifs, such as "life and death", "separation", "acacia", "hate spring" and "sad autumn". (In addition, there are four volumes, such as China Literature Theme and China Ancient Literature Revenge Theme. ).

Example: Study on the Motif of "Mother and Mother Counteraccusation"

Hebrew legend: Yue Se was sold to an Egyptian family, and her mistress pleaded with Yue Se, but she was rejected, so Yue Se was punished.

B Greek mythology: Feider, the wife of King theseus of Athens, courted Hippolytus, the son of theseus's ex-wife. After being rejected, she hanged herself, leaving a suicide note accusing Hippolytus of misconduct. Theseus took revenge on Poseidon and fell to his death.

Hiporutos

This kind of story comes from the disintegration of matriarchal society and the formation of paternal society, which shows men's blasphemy and subversion consciousness to the status of women housewives.

Faidel, a French tragedy written by Racine, inherits and strengthens this consciousness in theme.

Fadel, a famous Russian poetess in the 20th century, expressed full sympathy for Fadel's situation and deliberately emphasized theseus's cruelty and Hippolytus' indifference.

Zvetayeva kept the original form of the motif of "mistress counterclaim", but with the help of Faidel's wet nurse's perspective, she rendered Faidel's anguish and helplessness.

Faidel by Zvetayeva reflects the dissolution of patriarchal consciousness in the 20th century.

Zvetayeva

2. Research on the motif of characters

There are countless mythical and legendary figures and literary works in Chinese and western literature, but not many figures rise to the symbol of motif.

A comparative study of these literary or legendary figures with motif nature and symbolic significance is the main object of motif research.

Such as Medea, Prometheus, Faust, Abagong and Othello in the west, and Zhuge Liang, Bao Gong, Yu Gong and Lothario in China.

It is worth noting that some characters are obvious motifs. For example, Medea is the motif of revenge and Zhuge Liang is the motif of wisdom.

For some characters, the boundary between motif and theme is not very clear.

Such as Bao Gong, although it can be attributed to the motif of "justice", but this image has been obviously praised and criticized, in fact, it has risen to the height of the theme, with the nature of the theme figure.

Third, the theme research.

The object of theme research is not the theme presentation of a single work, but the mutual choice, mutual connection and mutual influence of themes. Specifically, it is to study the repetition and evolution of the same theme in the history of literature, and the acceptance and treatment of the same theme by different writers.

It is not difficult to find that many themes often appear in the literature of different times, countries or nationalities, and are constantly adopted by different writers.

For example, the theme of "irresistible fate" expressed by Oedipus in Greek myths and legends was written by the Greek tragic writer Sophocles. Later, he wrote: Roman writer Seneca, French classical playwright Gao Naiyi, English poet Dryden, Voltaire during the French Enlightenment.

Why do these writers of different nationalities, countries and distant places show such strong interest in the same theme? Are their Oedipus "identical"? If not, what are the differences? What are the reasons for some differences?

All these provide interesting and worthy research topics for thematology.

Theme research mainly includes the following aspects:

1, research topic number

Comparing the theme figures in Chinese and western literature, people will find an obvious difference:

The themes expressed by the theme characters in western literature are often changeable, even diametrically opposed. For example, Cain, who was regarded as a great transgression in the Bible, became a hero worthy of praise in Byron's works. Similar examples are rare in China's ancient literature.

In China literature, once a character becomes the representative of a certain theme, later works tend to develop along the original character direction of the theme character, adding new plots, making his character richer and less re-evaluated.

For example, the character Bao Gong reflects the same theme in any work.

2. Study the author's reprocessing of some plants, animals and geographical themes that have reached a certain theme.

Some animals and plants, such as pine, bamboo, plum (three friends in cold years), plum, orchid, bamboo, chrysanthemum (four gentlemen), jackal, tiger, leopard (four beasts), dragon and phoenix, unicorn (auspicious animals), and some geographical, astronomical and climatic phenomena, such as mountains and seas, have been recited by poets and described by writers for thousands of years.

On the one hand, this research also belongs to image research. For example, Japanese scholars have made a profound investigation on the two animal and plant themes of China's classical poems: azaleas and rhododendrons.

Cheng, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, wrote a poem: "What is the difference between cuckoo and bird, resentment and brilliance? It is suspected that the blood in the mouth drips into the flowers on the branches. "

Yang Wanli's "Rhododendron": What is the life of crying? On time, the cuckoo sounds. How much blood can a cuckoo have? A tear, I'm afraid.

Fourth, the theme research.

Theme research mainly investigates the spread and evolution of a theme in different cultural contexts, or the similarities and differences of similar themes in different cultural contexts.

The most widely used theme research is the myth theme research.

Facts have fully proved that myths in different regions are strikingly similar. For example, the theme of "The Great Flood" is described in all the important mythological systems in the world. A, China, gun and Dayu water conservancy. The Emperor of Heaven was furious and killed him with a gun. He was born in the womb. Shun ordered Yu to control water and dredge silt. 13 years, Yu's wife turned into a stone, and the stone cracked (Xia Dynasty).

Gun and Dayu's water control

B, Hebrew, the Lord punished the sins of the world, flooded the earth, and predicted that Noah would be saved by building an ark.

Noah's Ark

C In Greece, Zeus sent a flood to mankind to punish Prometheus for stealing fire. Prometheus' son and his brother's daughter threw stones behind them to rebuild mankind.

Prometheus

In these mythological themes, there is a common motif, namely the birth and continuation of life.

In the process of dealing with the same theme, the three myths have great differences in value orientation:

In China's mythology, Yu's father and son are absolutely opposite to God, full of sadness and tragedy.

In Greek mythology, Prometheus' punishment only symbolically tied a stone on the Caucasus Mountain and threw the stone at people, adding to the game color of the story.

In Hebrew mythology, God does not want to completely destroy mankind, and the overall style of the story is ethics and rationality.

The theme of folk stories is also an important object of theme research.

Folk literature can be said to be the mother of all literature, and the basic structure of literature is preserved in folk literature. This kind of textual research is like Ji Xianlin's Textual Research on Liu Zongyuan's Donkey.

A situational study of verbs (abbreviation of verb)

Situation is the relationship between characters at a certain moment. "

Every specific situation shows readers a certain relationship between characters, and at the same time, it interweaves the views and feelings of writers and characters in their works, which restricts and even affects the actions of characters, thus deriving various plots.

For example, at some point, the hero fell in love with the heroine, but the heroine fell in love with another man. In this situation, the two clues of the three characters (the love of the hero to the heroine and the love of the heroine to another man) constitute a group of secret and violent conflicts.

For another example, the hero and heroine love each other and swear to each other, but their parents (or one or both) prevent them from combining. This situation also implies a group of interpersonal relationships full of contradictions.

In a sense, the situation in literary works is actually a typical life situation, in which concrete and tense situations lurk.

This situation is strengthened with the development of the plot of the work until the end of the work-whether it is a tragedy or a comedy.

Situation and theme are interdependent. Every specific situation must contain a theme.

For example, The Man between Two Women shows the motif of love choice, "The daughter falls in love with the son of her father's enemy". This situation shows the theme of conflict between love and responsibility.

So Weinstein said that "the motif comes from the situation".

Like the motif, the number of basic situations is quite limited, even less than the number of motifs. French scholar George Polti wrote a book called "Thirty-six Drama Situations", thinking that all drama situations have been included.

The basic situation can be combined in many ways, and the number is unlimited.

Humanism studies how the limited basic situation spreads from one country (nation) to another, from one writer's pen to another's pen, and then innovates constantly to become countless works with distinctive times, national characteristics and personal style.

Situation research can usually be carried out from the following two aspects:

1. Study the specific situations that are common in literature and the different treatments of different writers on the basic situations.

For example, the conflict between love and obligation, morality and ethics, love triangle, ghosts and ghosts, etc. These basic situations can be seen in many love novels.

Studying the various situations in these works from the perspective of science can help us understand the author's ingenuity.

As Van Gogh said, "This kind of comparative study can often clarify the genius and art of different poets."

2. Research on situational motif.

This kind of research aims to dig out the situations with motifs in traditional literature and sort them out, such as love triangle; The husband is out (for war, business, etc.). I haven't heard from you for a long time, but my wife suddenly came back after remarriage; Unfamiliar father-son war, etc.

In China's classical drama, it is also a typical drama situation to "win the first prize when you are a child, and book the garden privately for life". The dramatists of past dynasties have evolved many scripts around this specific situation, which are enduring for a long time, and the mystery is worth exploring.

A study on the image and rhetoric of intransitive verbs

1, image research

Image is the image that people present in their consciousness when they look at things with aesthetic ideals, that is, "the image in their minds" (something full of subjective feelings).

There are many levels of image, mainly cultural image and personal image.

Cultural images are national and regional, such as the dragon and phoenix cranes in China, which embody authority, celebration and longevity, but not in the west.

Personal image. Every writer has a unique personal image in his creation, which often forms a personal image system and appears in his works like a spectrum (the image of water).

The moral behavior of water is all-encompassing. It never excludes any strange things that invade life in different ways, but it is never affected by it. Water's character seems to be particularly fragile and easy to yield. In fact, there is strength in weakness, and if there is a little determination, it is a trickle, but it is invincible. -Shen Congwen's "A Legendary Skill"