Du Fu In Song Dynasty Culture

The Song Dynasty, one of the most brilliant periods in the history of Tu Fu studies, played a leading role in the process of molding Tu Fu who had been poor and low-down before his death to become the most outstanding poet in Chinese history. Tu Fu's influence has already gone beyond the poem and even the literature field in Song Dynasty. He was the model of the culture of Song Dynasty. At present, the academia has made a lot of achievements on Tu Fu studies, such as The theory of Tu Fu's reception in Tang & Song Dynasty written by Cai Zhennian, Tu Fu's poem and the poem value of the people in Song Dynasty written by Lin Jizhong, and a great deal of other academic theses analyzing some cases of Tu Fu's reception of Su Shi, Wang Anshi, Huang Tingjian, Lu You, Xin Qiji and Wen Tianxiang, etc. But it has been an earliest try so far for the doctoral dissertation that made a systematic and thorough expatiation about the relationship between Tu Fu and the culture of Song Dynasty. The author worked hard to sketch lengthwise the history and the opinions of Tu Fu's reception in Song Dynasty, and describe breadthwise the reception's influences to many fields of the culture of Song Dynasty.In fact, the reception of Tu Fu in Song Dynasty was an important part of the culture reforming of Tang & Song Dynasty, which took place under the background of the third transition of Chinese traditional culture. From the middle Tang Dynasty to Northern Song Dynasty, Chinese culture transferred for the third time after the periods of Spring & Autumn and the Warring states and of Han & Wei Dynasty, which terminated the culture pattern of aristocracy and opened that of the common people relatively. The revival marked the transition from the immature pattern to the ripe one of feudal culture. The An-shi Rebellion broke out in 755 during Tian-bao was the milestone not only of feudal society's development from the prophase to the anaphase, but also of the third transition of Chinese traditional culture. As a historical personage at the crucial moment, Tu Fu summarized the cultural tradition in the past. At the same time, his poetry influenced by the culture spirit of transforming period shared the same spirit core with the culture of Song Dynasty. Furthermore, Tu Fu's great personality and perfect poetry provided sufficient recepting resources for the people of Song Dynasty. The contents mentioned above all were the main reasons that Tu Fu was concerned extensively and turned into the great masterat last in Song Dynasty.Tu Fu's great reputation gained since Yuan-he (806-820) of middle Tang Dynasty, and reached summit after the period of Yuan-you (1086-1094) of Northern Song Dynasty. The learning about Tu Fu by the people, who didn't have the sign to regard him as the only model, in the middle & latter period of Tang Dynasty was mostly a kind of spontaneous behavior, but it became a kind of aesthetic prevailing custom and the masses' conscientious behavior in Song Dynasty. Since the establishment of Northern Song Dynasty, the sovereign began to strengthen centralization and feudal ethics, consequently Confucianism rejuvenated once again. But Confucianism rejuvenated in Northern Song Dynasty not purely duplicated the primitive Confucianism before Qin Dynasty, but was a kind of philosophy with exquisite thought mode and realistic ethics content concurrently which had been set up by absorbing the doctrines of Buddhism & Taoism and bred Neo-Confucianism. A kind of new culture spirit grew up centered around the rational spirit with moralization & politicization, knowledge & scholarship, individualization & fallowness in Song Dynasty. Restricted by the specific culture psychology, the people of Song Dynasty filtered tradition once again. They imitated lots of objects successively such as Bai Juyi, Yao He, Jia Dao, Lee Shangyin and Han Yu etc. But only Tu Fu became the culture model finally, whose noble personality and rich & colorful poetry accorded with the value of the people of Song Dynasty. There even appeared a phenomenon that almost everyone did one's utmost to extol Tu Fu after the period of Jingyou & Qingli (1034-1048).The idolization of Tu Fu by the people advanced side by side along two roads in Song Dynasty. First one was moral judgment. Above all, Wang Anshi put Tu Fu in the first position according to ethics criterion as he compiled the collections of Li Po, Tu Fu, Han Yu and Ou Yangxiu's poetry. Then Su Shi put forward the viewpoint that Tu Fu had never forgotten the monarch in every meal, so he regarded Tu as the greatest poet in Chinese history. The poetry genre of Jiangxi looked upon Tu Fu as its ancestor of poetry writing whose initiator, Huang Tingjian, also praised highly Tu Fw's noble quality of loyalty to the emperor and having the deep love to the country that caused strong and extensive resonance and even became the spirit prop of moral of people after the national calamity broken out in Jingkang. Tu Fu's poetry was even considered the sacred classics in Song Dynasty. Second one was aesthetics standard. When Wang Anshi, Su Shi and many other poets canonized Tu Fu'snoble quality, they also admired very much to his great attainments of poem. Wang Anshi praised highly to the artistic conception embracing all of Tu Fu's poetry, and 5m Shi definitely advocated that Tu Fm's poetry had summarized and held all the characters poems before him. The poetry genre of Jiangxi even imitated 7?'s poetry word by word. In all, a new type of poem that towered shoulder by shoulder with the poem of Tang Dynasty had come into being gradually in Song Dynasty.When the people of Song Dynasty measured, selected and remolded the cultural models with their own values, Tu Fu's noble personality, rich thoughts and the poetry with profound attainments permeated in many aspects of the culture of Song Dynasty, among which the philosophy, the aesthetics, the literature and the art were most prominent and closely related to Tu Fu. Just like four enormous rivers mutual interweaved, the four aspects flowed the basic culture spirit of Song Dynasty converged together into the boundless ocean of Tu Fu's reception.About the philosophy. As the successor of the thoughts of primitive Confucianism before Qin Dynasty, Tu Fu practiced the thoughts of kindheartedness and resumed the idea to be loyalty to one's country, so he became the real pioneer of the movement of rejuvenation of Confucianism in Northern Song Dynasty. The people of Song Dynasty considered Tu Fu to be similar to Mencius not only because he had carried forward Mencius' thoughts of faithful to one's country and mercifulness to the common people, but also extended Mencius' theory of human nature and opened a route for the theory on inner heart of Lu Jiuyuan and Wang Yangming. Simultaneously, the suffering consciousness & social responsibility and the broad-minded state of Tu Fu made a notable impact on the life philosophy of the people in Song Dynasty.About the aesthesis. The aesthesis of Song Dynasty was a kind of more mature type which was reason and introversive compared with that of Tang Dynasty. There were four peculiarities for the aesthetics of Song Dynasty that were vigorous & profound, rational & experienced, simple & elegant and the trend of secularism. Although Tu Fu's poetry showed multitudinous styles of aesthetics, the most important type of them was the mature and even senescent flavor affected by the culture spirit of transitional period, which just conformed to the reality of the culture and became the important sources of the aesthetics in Song Dynasty.About the literature. There were mainly five literary forms including poem,Ci, essay, novel and theatre in Song Dynasty. The poetry of Song Dynasty paid more attention to knowledge and reason than that of Tang Dynasty did. As a poet stricken across the periods of the high and the middle Tang Dynasty, Tu Fm's poetry still continued the ethos of emphasizing inspiration and talent, but he attached more importance to reality, learning and efforts, which enlightened greatly the people of Song Dynasty. In the subject, Tu Fu enhanced the proportion of the poetry about society, daily life, individuals and one's inner heart. In the types of literature, he absorbed bravely the ingredients including contents and the techniques of essay while writing poetry. The poem of Song Dynasty carried forward the tendencies as stated above. In the language, he was good at emulating other's points, which impelled the people of Song Dynasty to create a new language system that was ornamental, rich and colorful. In addition, the people of Song Dynasty excavated the factor of discussing and arguing of Tu's poetry. They carried forward the method of recording the history with poetry Tu Fu had initiated, which pushed the tradition of patriotism in Chinese poem to come into being at last.Tu Fu had no any Ci to be handed down. And his essays were very limited in number. However it could not be looked down upon the influences of Tu Fu's personality and poetry on the Ci and essay in the tide of worshipping Tu in Song Dynasty. The people of Song Dynasty often took the authors of Ci as Tu Fu. Through analyzing the comparability, we could reveal the impacts of Tufu on Ci. He not only propelled the techniques, the forms and the tunes of Ci more perfect, but also contributed a lot to the method of writing Ci with poetry and essay. Besides, the language, the style and the artistic conception of 7?'s poetry also changed into the important resources of Ci writing. Though Tu Fu's essays had adapted to the overall transition of the writing style in Tang Dynasty, its achievement was inferior to his poetry. His essays' main effects on that of Song Dynasty were as follows: the writing thought of stressing morality, the content of emphasizing practical results, the creation of Ode and the creativeness of breaking the boundary of literary forms, and so on.About the art. The spirit of Chinese artist had gone through a tremendous transform from miraculousness to enjoyness in Tang & Song Dynasty. The people of Tang Dynasty emphasized rules and showed the pursuit of catching the spirit with the shape, so the miraculousness was the highest standard of appreciating of the age. The people of Song Dynasty abandoned the regulation & technique and laid more stress to express their interest & meaning, thereforethey applied to project themselves and sought for a kind of aesthetics1 taste of literati. Tu Fm's artistic thoughts were very rich. He advocated that the art should reach the ingenious and magical degree under the restraint of all sorts of rules. In other words, his artistic thought that had reached the summit of the times was a tache of the chain in the whole transmutation of artistic spirit from Tang Dynasty to Song Dynasty. Moreover, Tu Fh's poetry had provided a great deal of inspiration and resource for the calligraphy and the drawings, which became a sort of splendid scenery of art in Song Dynasty.Of course, Tu Fw's contributions for the culture of Song Dynasty were not merely limited to the four aspects as stated above. Tu Fu and his poetry had affected history, education, iatrology, custom and many other fields of culture in Song Dynasty to some degree. There are more room for the investigators to study and probe in order to grasp completely the relationship between Tu Fu and the culture of Song Dynasty.