A Study On The World Of Poetry In Early Song Dynasty

This monograph including the introduction and conclusion part and five chapters is about the world of poetry in early Song Dynasty in China.In the introduction the writer has reflected the evaluation criterion and the way of the illumination of the current research done in this field. The writer points out that the current research wants of a wider horizon on the evaluation criterion, since it evaluates all phenomena of the poetry world completely depending on if it has influences on the change from Tang Dynasty style to Song Dynasty style of the poetry. On the other hand, the way of illumination of current research is not detailed enough, since the way adopted in current research is nothing else but the development of "three styles" (the Bai Juyi Style, the late Tang style and Xikun style). The writer hopes to have a breakthrough at this in the monograph.The first chapter is about the complicated situation and mood the poets were in during early Song Dynasty and the influences on their works and literature ideas. This chapter discusses about two points of these ideas: the first one is the idea of exceeding the earlier poets; the second is the idea of using parables in traditional poetry and Fu (a style of classical Chinese prose) filtered in the Song style poetry. This chapter also describes the change of the official poetry style from extreme delicacy and beauty to elegance during the time of emperor Taizong and Zhenzong. This chapter discusses the relationship between the late Xikun style and Bai style in this background.In Chapter two the writer tries to find the joint point of the poetry theory and the works during early Song Dynasty by analyzing the relationships between poetry and nature, society and poets.Chapter three discusses about the geographic distribution of the literati in early Song Dynasty and the author points out that the poetry work is less prosperous in emperor Zhenzong's time than that of Taizong upon the fact from a complete research. In the end of this chapter the author tries to analyze the reason of this difference.Chapter Four focuses on the development of poetry in early Song Dynasty according to different styles. The seven syllable poem turns out to be especially symbolic among all those styles. In emperor Taizong's time, all styles developed evenly, however in Zhenzong's time, the practical and particular style turned out to be the leading trend. This division of time supports the conclusions from former chapters and can prove that the poetry history of early Song Dynasty should be divided into two parts according to the change of emperor from Taizong to Zhenzong.Upon the conclusions from the former four chapters, Chapter Five and the conclusion part have some discussions on Taizong's time and Zhenzong's time separately. Chapter Five displays the variety of Taizong's time by revealing the specific art styles of Wang Yucheng, Yang Yi and Kou Zhun. The conclusion part revalues the position of Zhenzong's time during the poetry world of the early Song Dynasty and points out that Ouyang Xiu and his age cohorts inherited the poetry style in Zhenzong's time rather than changing it. During the time of the first three emperors of Song Dynasty, there was already a period which preliminarily showed the trend of the poetry in Song Dynasty.