On Chinese Poetics In 1990's

The constitution of poetics should include such actions as analysis of literary history, exploration of literary theory, and practice of literary criticism, especially it should refer to the reflective study that is grounded on these actions. The poetic theory in 1990' s is a great part of modern Chinese poetics in that its constitution is an academic movement that has explicit, self-conscious purpose.The poetic theory in 1990' s is in no case only the study of those phenomena that emerge in writing poetry in this period, because 1990' s is the last decade in the one-hundred- year development of modern Chinese poetry, and we have already come to the mutual understanding about the historical view of Chinese literature in 20th century, so it is necessary for us to retrospect its historical development and to refer to both the Chinese poetic tradition and the western poetic tradition when we engage ourselves in groping for the way of modern Chinese poetry. What differentiates the poetics in 1990' s from those in other periods is that it attaches great importance to modernity.In the introductory part of this thesis, I discuss, at both the phenomenal level and the idealistic level, the constitution of modern poetics. What I do at the former level is to mainly describe these phenomena so as to present its basic characteristics, while at the latter level, what I do is to analyze and reflect its concept to reveal the importance of studying modernity.In chapter 1 of this thesis, by investigating the source and meaning of the concept of 'pure poetry' , and its reception by modern Chinese poetics in 1930' s and 1940' s, I show that poets in 1980' s and 1990' s, to a great extent, misread and misunderstood what the 'pure poetry' means.In chapter 2, with analyzing similarities and differences between ' intellectual writing' and 'writing on folk position' , I discernthe misunderstanding of 'intellectual writing' . Then 1 come to the conclusion that the actual importance of bringing up again 'intellectuality' lies in reshaping the image of individual intellectual which has been distorted over and over again, so that we can rebuild independent, free, skeptic and critical 'poetic spirit' .What I analyze in chapter 3 is the idea of 'midlife writing' , This idea, I think, is apparently related with R. Barthes' postmodern metaphor of autumnal state, whereas it is essentially a kind of nostalgic complex of scholar-bureaucrats that comes into being from their long immersion in traditional culture.In chapter 4, I clarify the poetic meaning of ' individual writing' respectively at the levels of individual and self, individual and historic sense, individual and realistic responsibility, individual experience and non-individual experience.The subject of chapter 5 is notion^in narration. In so far as it reflects connection of poetry with the reality, it is a symbol that marks poetic transition to 'episteme' in social transformation in 1990' s, and it represents a yearn for a kind of 'new feeling' that suits to 'midlife writing' .I comment on Zheng Min' s new poetic theory in chapter 6. There are two elementary characteristics in her theory. One is to refer to self-experience, and the other is profound 'modern sense' . I study from the two aspects-language and culture on the one hand, language and poetry on the other, to examine her acknowledgement of the relation between language and traditional culture.The conclusion of this chapter includes three parts: in the first part, I point out some defects exist in poetic criticism in 1990' s, and introduce some relevant western hermeneutic theories in the second part, in order to rectify those defects to a certain extent; while in the third part, referring to hermeneutic theories, I attempt to bring forward four basic principles of modern poetic hermeneutics: to establish a model of language criticism which focuses on readingtext intensively, to seek for 'dialogue criticism' in virtue of communication, to take on responsibility of groping for Muse' s truth, and to make effor...