Abstract

Metonymy has long been treated as the forgotten trope while cognitive approach to metonymy sheds new light on the research of metonymy. Metonymy is not only considered as a figure of speech, but also a cognitive process in which one conceptual entity, the vehicle, provides mental access to another conceptual entity, the target, within the same idealized cognitive model (Radden & Kovecses, 1999). The investigation of concrete metonymy in Li Bai’s poems is aimed to offer a new perspective of metonymic devices for literary studies. Metonymy has the capacity to generate impressive aesthetic effects and highlight the theme in poetry. What’s more, it is a mirror to reflect the cognitive process the poet construes and thinks about the world. As far as readers are concerned, their interpretation of poetry partly depends on their mental construction of metonymic devices.

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