DOI: 10.5176/2251-3566_L318.52
Authors: Yiqing Fan
Abstract: Poetry is literature which, with exquisite language, express the colorful affections of the poet, and evokes consideration as well as resonance from readers. Thus poetry can be seen as a special conversation between poets and readers, in which sentences are the poet’s monologue, while readers have various answers which are not necessarily delivered to the poet. Since poems are the reveal of the poet’s affections as a special conversation, readers tacitly presuppose that the Cooperative Principle of Grice is observed, which is, every word or sentence, no matter in which way they flout the maxims of CP, are in no way a nonsense, but are for the sake of expressing a special feeling. Yu Kuang-Chung, a famous Chinese writer, essayist, and poet, born in Nanking in 1928, and moved to Hong Kong in 1949 with his parents, and the to Taiwan in 1950, after Kuo Min Tang was defeated by the Communist Party. Because that historical background, Yu Kuang-Chung was not able to be back to the mainland until 1995, 46 years after his departure. During the 46 years, out of the irreconcilable homesickness, Yu Kuang-Chung wrote a vast amount of nostalgic essays and poems. This paper tries to analyze Yu Kuang-Chung’s nostalgic poems from the prospect of flouts exploiting the four maxims of Grice’s Cooperative Principle. Flouts exploiting maxim of Quality are occasions when figures of speech are applied, such as simile, metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy, personification, etc. Flouts exploiting maxim of Quantity are mainly repetition of words and sentences to strengthen the emotions--giving more information. Flouts exploiting maxim of relation mainly reveal themselves by listing several irrelevant images in the former part of the poem. Flouts exploiting maxim of manner are found when an unusual format is employed. All these flouts created unexpected excellent effects. The eight poems listed as examples below are all Yu Kuang-Chung’s nostalgic poem, except for example 6 and example 8, which are ancient Chinese poems.
Keywords: Cooperative Principle ; Yu Kuang-Chung ; nostalgic poems
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