Structural Metaphor in the Preface and Text of Lu Xun’s A Madman’s Diary

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.220504.096How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Madman’s diary; enlightenment; structure; metaphor

Abstract

In Lu Xun’s Madman’s diary, the preface and the text belong to two different discourse systems: the traditional discourse represented by the etiquette of “cannibalism” and the “Enlightenment” discourse represented by anti-feudalism. The relationship between tradition and enlightenment is reflected through the structure between the preface and the text, which forms a metaphor. The two systems are opposite at the levels of narrative discourse, narrative mode and narrator, but they define each other. At the end of the novel, the symbol of “madman”, which originally belonged to the “Enlightenment” system, healed, so he went to another system. This arrangement shows the author’s thinking on tradition and enlightenment. There is a huge contrast and tension between the two systems, in which we can interpret many modern and worldwide meanings, such as the doubt of all existing values, the call of human rationality, and the description of human loneliness.

Copyright

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Li Mengqian
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/06/01
TI  - Structural Metaphor in the Preface and Text of Lu Xun’s A Madman’s Diary
BT  - Proceedings of the 2022 8th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 530
EP  - 534
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.220504.096
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.220504.096
ID  - Mengqian2022
ER  -