Du Fu Chang'an Culture

The dissertation attempts to investigate the relationship between Du Fu's poems and the distinct regional and metropolitan connotation displayed by Chang'an culture in Tang Dynasty. The study can thereby further reveal the reasons for the creation of his poems from the man-land relationship perspective and the significant role Chang'an culture plays in the poetry-creating process in order to establish the vital status of Chang'an culture in Du Fu's poems.The introduction mainly summaries the significance of the selected subject, the current situation of research, method and train of thought. Meanwhile, this section sketches out the characteristics of Chang'an culture, namely inheritance, inclusiveness and diversity.The first chapter briefly expounds the impact of Chang'an culture on Tang poems.Above all, classical Tang poems are mostly represented by those on Chang'an culture with wide topics which reflect extensive social realities in Tang Dynasty. Chang'an culture, in turn, expands and intensifies the themes of Tang poems to a great extent. Besides, Tang poems not only serve as the main literary genre showcasing Chang'an culture but also turn the term "Chang'an" into the very image of prosperity and aspiration in ancient Chinese literature.Furthermore, it can be drawn from poems on Chang'an culture that poets were inclined to resort to the identical substances to express their similar sentiment, or the parallel emotion will welled up in their minds as they confronted the same objects. As a result, such fashion had prevailed as repeatedly chanting the same things which performed as the constant carrier of certain particular feelings committed by people in Tang period. This kind of creative tendency had contributed to the diversity of themes in Tang poems. For example, the boom of Qujiang reflected the poets' ambition towards a flourishing age and their persistence of dreams. The theme of reclusive life in Zhongnan Mountain protruded the poets' official thought of retreating for the sake of advancing. However, Huaqing palace——the ironical subject manifested the writers' strong sense of intervening politics after rounds of meditation towards the political situation then. Accordingly, the above-mentioned subjects including official aspiration, reclusive life and allegory all highlighted the influence of Chang'an culture on Tang poems.In addition, the section focuses on the discussion the role poetic trend within Chang'an culture plays in shaping the basic style and tone of Tang poems. Being capital of Tang Dynasty, Chang'an acted as the interface of the northern and southern poetic styles. The Northern and Southern Dynasties had witnessed the interplay of the southern poems featured by delicacy and freshness and the northern ones renowned for their magnificence and spectacular. The poems of two distinct styles had experienced further interaction during the Sui Dynasty and finally reached the thorough fusion in around the 15th year of Kaiyuan in Tang Dynasty. Such integrated feature revealed by Chang'an culture endowed Tang poems with positive spirit, rich contents, magnificent images and refined expressive techniques, symbolizing the establishment of the grand and vigorous tone of Tang poems.The second chapter illuminates the connection between Du Fu's poems and Chang'an culture. The polydimensional interpretation conducted by Du Fu in poems towards the royal court, officials and urban scenery involved in Chang'an culture was characterized by comprehensiveness, incisiveness and official-emphasis. At the same time, the romance, secularity and unremitting spirit of Chang'an culture had been sublimated in verses, which accounted for the flouring momentum, dense notion of misery and unceasing concern with state and people embodied by Du Fu's poems.Chapter three elaborates the interrelationship between Chang'an culture and Du Fu's poems in thriving period of Tang Dynasty. Focusing on the social trend in Chang'an culture, such as friends-making fashion, militarism and conviviality, this part is designated to discuss the impact of such social custom on Du Fu's poems. As a matter of fact, Du Fu's poems in this period had been largely affected by romantic plot of Chang'an culture.For one thing, the friends-making trend had produced consequences for Du Fu's poems. The acquaintance with other poets in Chang'an served as the important opportunity for Du Fu to appreciate the essence of poetry then, in addition, the discussion with friends on poems enabled him to accept the poetic ideology in thriving period of Tang age. It could be concluded from the estimate by Du Fu on others' poetic opinion that the gist of his poetic ideology in this period should be advocating elegance, striving for novelty and stressing the strictness and diversity of art of composition which in return, performed as the principle guiding his writing practice.Furthermore, the militarism had reacted on Du Fu's poems. The desire for military welling up through his poems corresponded to the Confucius viewpoint of upholding unity, most importantly, affected by the militarism in Chang'an culture. The forbidding geographical condition and remote location served as the origin of such trend in Qin Dynasty, whereas military-respect measures implemented by authorities later and people's psychological recognition, namely "warriors derive from northwest frontier" facilitated the succession and development of militarism in Chang'an. Tianbao period had witnessed the boom of military-respect fashion which later turned into a kind of heyday spirit and gradually died out. Militarism, based on heyday spirit, had become an important theme of Du Fu's poems and constituted his positive tone and solemn and stirring style. The characteristic showcased the mental outlook and artistic feature of the prosperous Tang period.Moreover, the conviviality tendency had also exerted influence on Du Fu's poems. Emperors in Tang period directly expedited the prevalence of conviviality; the most typical representatives were emperor of Taizong and Xuanzong. The musical ideology of the former laid solid foundation for the formation of the conviviality custom, whereas the thought of latter and his own practice made it prevailing in Chang'an city. In Tang Dynasty, imperial exam candidates tended to present their poems and essays to officials before the examination for the sake of being praised or recommended. This social tradition was called Xing Juan which accounted for Du Fu's official intention betrayed in his convivial activities in Chang'an. Therefore, in his poems of this kind, the sense of sorrow and pretty could be read through rhymes committed by scholars and melodies enjoyed by prominent officials and persons on feast occasions. This feature could be reasonably and objectively construed by the aesthetic custom of "sorrow is beauty" in Han Dynasty. Nevertheless, the overriding reason lied in the connotation included in Du Fu's poems of conviviality, namely depression of personality——desolate mood, collision of dreams and realities——wrathful feelings, orientation of Confucian benevolence thought——sympathetic sense. The sadness-based psychology constituted the metal origin of Du Fu's realistic composition, making his poems-creating style draw close to realism gradually.Chapter four discusses the relation between Chang'an culture in turbulent times and Du Fu's poems. Chang'an culture in Tang stage was mainly featured by the co-existence of Confucianism Buddhism and Taoism. The traditional Chang'an religious situation in heyday represented by Buddhism first, Confucianism end did not undergo complete change until the outbreak of An Lushan-Shi Siming Rebellion after which Confucianism occupied the first place. The rejuvenation of Confucianism made the secularity of Chang'an culture exert tremendous impact on Du Fu and his poems, as a result, he eventually formed the realistic poetry-creating patterns.First of all, Du Fu realized his ambition of assisting emperor. Chang'an city collapsed during the An-Shi Rebellion, thus Du Fu fled to Fengxiang where he was awarded the title of Zuo Shiyi (equals to present censor). Harboring grateful emotion, he worked scrupulously to fulfill duties, and his poems then were full of harmony and peace, displaying his psychological approval of the official position and marking the realization of his previous dream. There were threefold reasons accounting for the achievement of his aspiration:the newly-established social order and law in Suzong period fell short of perfection; new members were wanted at that time for central government; Du Fu's return to Fengxiang showed his honesty to ruler and manifested his personal merits. Secondly, the status of "history of poetry" was finally established on the part of Du Fu's poems. Critics in later generations from different perspectives interpreted "history of poetry" whose essence should be the perfect combination of history of social affairs concerning the nation's rise and fall and the whole process of what he had experienced with tear and blood. During the composition in this stage, his depiction of warfare implied the sense of patriotism and loyalty to lord and bitterness caused by instability and homelessness which together with social condition in turbulent ages revealed such feature as history of poetry.In addition, Yue-Fu poem was inaugurated by Du Fu. The corresponding literary representation of the tremendous change in ideological sphere during this time was the extinction of old literary pattern and the formation of new one. Du Fu's new Yue-Fu poems were cases in point. Compared with Li Bai's poems of the same kind, poems by Du Fu were renowned for the newly-created themes, whereas Li Bai's verses were almost based on ancient ones. In regard of subject matter, contents in Li's Yue-Fu poems mostly connected with the ancient subjects, however, what Du expressed in poems were inspired by the realities. Concerning poetic form, Du's poems comprised tidy and antithetic lines with rhyme patterns. Li's verses, on the contrary, preserved such Yue-Fu poetic tradition as fixing syntactic mode and he resorted to the mixed sentences and distinct expression "Jun Bu Jian". Regarding techniques of expression, usually Li was likely to use figure of speech, such as similarity and association, comparison and exaggeration to produce the romantic feature of Yue-Fu poems. Du, on the opposite pole, turned to diverse narrative techniques to present factual character of Yue-Fu poetry from multi-angles. In short, Du Fu's Yue-Fu poems got rid of the traditional writing pattern of fully imitating the ancient versions, thus integrating themes with contents more closely and to the great extent expanding the scopes and techniques of expression on the part of Yue-Fu poetic genres. Du Fu's accomplishment laid the pioneering status of his poems in Yue-fu literary sphere.Chapter five mainly probes into the influence of centripetal force of Chang'an culture on Du Fu's poems, in other words, the Chang'an feelings involved in his later poems which fully symbolizes that Du Fu is affected by the unremitting soul of Chang'an culture.Chang'an scenery collectively reproduced his wonderful memory and served as the emblem of the yearning Chang'an, thus presented as the aesthetic characteristic in Du's poems. The attachment to friends in Chang'an highlighted such feature of his poems as concentrating on human emotion. The review of the experiences in Chang'an displayed his insistence on personality. The pursuit of dreams in Du Fu's poems emphasized his perseverance for Confucian ideology and illuminated the vital reason for the fact that the poems could spur and encourage later generations even though they were filled with woeful tone. The Chang'an feelings in Du Fu's poems not only performed as the sublimation of personality and intensification of scholars'sentiment, but also acted as the momentum for his poetry-creation, contributing to his poetic glory, Kuizhou poems were good cases in point. Besides, his sincere Chang'an feeling further highlighted the sense of depression involved in poems.