从树的意象看乔治·赫伯特的理想圣殿英语语言文学专业论文.docxVIP

Abstract George Herbert was one of the metaphysical poets in the seventeenth century. Most of his poems are religious poems. He was good at adopting traditional images to express his affections towards the Lord. For George Herbert, the religious principles, forms and customs recorded in the Bible are the inexhaustible source of his inspiration. His collection, The Temple, published in 1633, received praise from the public and gained the favor of the readers for its religious thought and special form of expression. Coleridge, Emerson and T.S. Eliot were once his faithful readers. There are few readers of his poems at home for its religious color, which is hard to understand for Chinese non-Christians. At present, the collection has not been translated as a whole in China, only several famous pieces have their translation version. An image is a symbol in the author’s mind, evolving from his subjective emotions. A literary image is a symbol reflecting both the author’s subjective emotions and objective social life. In his collection, The Temple, George Herbert applied plenty of images to deliver his emotions towards the Lord. The tree is an important image in Herbert’s lyric verse, delivering his ideal idea on life. In Christianity, the temple is a place for Christians to show their love and worship to the Lord. In Herbert’s collection, the temple has a different meaning. It can refer to an ideal place for living in Herbert’s imagination. Therefore, it may be a society or a community. However, Herbert didn’t show us what the temple really is. The thesis focuses on exploring the characteristic of the temple from the perspective of the image of tree in reference to Herbert’s subjective affection and objective social life, which will help us fully understand Herbert’s poetry. This thesis tries to explore the temple from three aspects: harmony, virtues and self-verification, which are in line with the wish of people in the 17th century. At that time of turbulence, people