Both the nurse(Gibbons, 2008:107) in the giant work "Romeo and Juliet" written by William Shakespeare and the Hong Niang in "Romance of Western Chamber" accomplished in the 13th century by the famous dramatist Wang shifu are quite eye-catching female minor images respectively in the Eastern and Western literature history. Referring to the social status, both served as the faithful maid of their mistress and both ignored the social hierarchy. Also, their loyalty and care to their masters were quite obvious and vividly depicted. According to these, some academics were combined and studied by the way of parallel research, opening up a colorfully and glitteringly academic world. But on the whole, the previous similar research mostly only for one of them, the study on differences was relatively weak, especially on the background of Eastern and Western cultures to promote the Eastern and Western cultures exchange, which needs to be more thorough and more systematic. In view of this, this essay brought their images into the field of comparison between Chinese and Western cultures, to explore the differences by means of the main theory of Grice's Cooperative Principle with Leech's Politeness Principle being an assistant to the whole research. Besides, the same rhetorical devices were applied in this essay while different personalities were further illustrated.
The whole paper is organized as follows: the first part stated the background of the works and the similarities between them, showing the reason why putting these two together to do comparative study. The second part probed into their different personalities with the help of pragmatic theory. The nurse, who stressed her importance in any possible way, her comic and sophisticated character satisfied the plot. Hong Niang, who was fearless to challenge the moral ethics, won the image of
an intelligent and merciful woman. The third part further investigated the aesthetic feature embodied on them: with the principal theme of love, the nurse epitomized the "actualism" image; as for Hong Niang, she held the literature personality with "idealism". The part was a deduce, discussing the delicate relevance between the image and the whole story. Last, the conclusion could be the distillation of the essay.
Key Words：Cooperative Principle, Politeness Principle, female minor images, comparative study
中文摘要
莎士比亚创作的《罗密欧与朱丽叶》中的奶妈和13世纪中国著名的剧作家王实甫创作的《西厢记》中的红娘，分别是中西文学史上十分引人注目的配角女性形象。她们有着相同的社会地位，对于主人的忠诚与关心刻画生动，跃然纸上，是忽略了社会等级制度存在的形象。基于此，学界曾有人取平行研究的思路对二人加以研究，开拓出一篇异彩纷呈，摇曳多姿的学术园地。但整体看来，既往的同类课题研究大多只针对其中一部作品人物形象进行分析，对比分析人物形象的辨异性却很少。尤其从中西方文化背景下从辨异性入手进而促进中西文化对话交流的研究，还有待深入化，系统化。鉴于此，本文通过用会话合作理论加以礼貌原则辅助来进行人物形象研究。除此之外，本文也对作品中运用了相同的修辞手法而体现出的人物鲜明个性做出了进一步分析。
第一部分主要是背景介绍并指出了两部作品相似性，陈述了选取此题进行比较研究的原因。第二部分通过语用学理论探讨两人人物性格的不同之处。奶妈时刻体现以自我为中心的特点，她滑稽又世故的形象与设置的情节相辅相成。红娘勇于挑战道德伦理，她的智慧勇敢体现了“尚善”的中国特色。第三部分是对于人物艺术形象的进一步分析：以爱情这条主线来看，奶妈可看作是“现实主义”的集中体现；而红娘则是“理想主义”的代表。第四部分是基于以上分析的推论，讨论了人物形象设定与整个故事之间的微妙关联。最后，通过总结使论文得到总结和升华。8495 《罗密欧与朱丽叶》中奶妈与《西厢记》中红娘的人物形象对比:http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_6697.html