Reconstruing the image of Shan Gui

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the image reconstrual of Shan Gui 山鬼 in the multimodal translation from the poem Shan Gui to three renowned paintings, i.e., Li Gonglin’s 李公麟 (date unknown; 1049–1106), Fu Baoshi’s 傅抱石’s (1945) and Xu Beihong’s 徐悲鸿 (1943), within the framework of social semiotics, and to explore the reason why the image changed through recontextualization. It is found that the image of Shan Gui reconstrued by Li looks like a detached sprite; Fu is a sentimental goddess, while Xu is a mundane human girl. Contextual factors, including scholastic explanations of the poem, the individual orientation of painters, and their media choices, contribute to such image divergence.