The story of “Ding Gu” (Lady Ding) from In Search of the Supernatural establishes a righteous image of a female folk deity, who showed her presence and power to win men’s respect to women. Although clearly speaking in a didactic tone through a karmic event, the story with several free motifs and the shift of perspectives causes defamiliarization and adds to the distance between audience and the heroine. As a result, the reader is forced to reexamine the significance of the story. The significance of defamilization instills Ding Gu’s image with strong self-awareness throughout the story. This close reading will focus on interpreting the defamiliarization aroused by the two aspects—the motifs and the shift of perspectives— and interpreting its significance to understand the personality of Ding Gu and the verisimilitude of the tale.
　　Defamiliarizaion of Motifs
　　This story can be divided into seven scenes, which constitute a minimal story and can also be regarded as bound motifs:
　　1. Immediate exposition: The heroine’s marriage and suicide;
　　2. Process A: She sent a spiritual message to shamans and set the day of rest;
　　3. Process B: She planned to return home and dealt with two hooligans;
　　4. Process C: She found an old man to ferry her and promised him a repayment;
　　5. Pivot and climax: The old man saw two men dead in water and lots of fish on the bank;
　　6. Reaction: The old man loaded his boat with fish and went home.
　　7. Impact: Ding Gu is enshrined by people.
　　Apart from the bound motifs, there are several free motifs in the story: the time Ding Gu crossed the river, her dress and the umbrella, her servant, the location, her retreating into the grass. These motifs do not cause problems in understanding the main trunk of the story and its didactic tone, which shows sympathy to women and advocates punishing the evil and praising the good. However, these motifs do cause an unbalance between the story time and the actual reading time, the unbalance which slows the pace and distance readers from the heroine.
　　First, after Ding Gu initially established her status of a deity among common people by sending a message to shamans, the story, rather than elaborating on how exactly this original sacrifice on the women’s day takes place (which readers probably expect to know), quickly transitions to the third scene. There is a conspicuous difference in presenting a sacrifice to a wrong spirit in a story titled “Zi Gu shen”紫姑神 (Purple Dame Goddess), which immediately follows “Ding Gu” in the Taiping guangji and which also concerns a woman deity. Despite both of the two women committing suicide out of insufferable mistreatment and becoming a local deity, Zi Gu was described in a more mimetic way through the exact narration of her sacrifice. However, though Zi Gu might also have sent a message to shamans to show her will and power, this point was left out of the narrative and consequently brings her into a passive position with a weaker power the moment she descended her spirit on an image when evoked by people.
　The second important free motif is her dress and the umbrella, which is the starting moment of the anomaly presented to readers. It might be raining that moment, but it is weird for an old man to load reeds for firewood without setting a canopy to protect it from getting wet (unless he is not a human either). Judging from the color of her dressing and that of her umbrella, it can be figured out that someone died in her family. That she has been in the mourning dress for over ten years and is unable to get reincarnated implies that her resentment of mistreatment toward her mother-in-law has not been resolved. It is not told whether she took revenge on the family, as a wrong spirit usually does, but it seems that she extends her interest from sending shamans spiritual messages to carrying them out in person. The umbrella and maid servant can both be regarded as an upgrade of her status (it might be the maid who held the umbrella for her), which imply her self-awareness of reputation and her desire to be respected and recognized as a lady.
　　The other two free motifs like the ferry place called Ox-bank Ford and Ding Gu retreating into the grass remain incomprehensible. The Ox-bank Ford might be the real place the story occurred, but its mysterious legends including the golden Ox and various monsters in the water unavoidably slow the reading; readers also expect something relative to happen. Since the place appears in a zhiguai story before in other xiaoshuo that were written later, the disconnection between it and Ding Gu elongates the distance between readers and the story, and suddenly make unfamiliar a well-known place full of mystery. One possibility is that these two legends were not necessarily formed before Ding Gu, nor the place must be the original one in the story. It might be only approximate to the real place. Due to its later reputation, narrators moved it into this story to increase its mysterious color and the tension in reading, so as to attract audience. (责任编辑：南粤论文中心)转贴于南粤论文中心: http://www.nylw.net(代写代发论文_毕业论文带写_广州职称论文代发_广州论文网）