Analysis of the Senders in Some Contemporary Chinese Literary Works

Abstract

The concept of the sender originates from Greimas' semiotic square theory, but its earliest origin can be traced back to Propp. Propp discovered that the 31 "functional units" that form the basic structure of folk tales are distributed within seven "spheres of action", including the villain, the donor, the helper, the princess and her father, the dispatcher, the hero, and the false hero. The French theorist Greimas reorganized Propp's seven "spheres of action" and simplified them into six corresponding actants, namely subject/object, sender/receiv - er, opponent/helper, and established a model. This article intends to select one of the actants, the sender, to analyze Zhang Ailing's The Story of the Golden Cangue, Su Tong's Wives and Concubines, and Yan Geling's Frost's Descent, so as to further explore the profound connotations of the senders in these three articles.