A Study On Li Mengyang And He Jingming's Poetics

As the heads of the Former Seven Scholars and the leaders of an archaist literary movement, Li Mengyang and He Jingming, the two Middle Ming Dynasty poets, reached a remarkable achievement in poetry and literature thoughts. Tan Qian , a historian in the late Ming Dynasty, commented:"Li and He are generally acknowledged to be the top two of the Four Greatest Litterateurs. Their small defects can not obscure their remarkable achievements."As well as their virtues, the poetical views of Li & He are revered and warmly discussed by the later generations, which exert a far-reaching influence on the literary theory of Ming and Qing dynasty. The controversy of Li and He typically demonstrated their poetical views and triggered abundant researches by later scholars. But due to various reasons, these researches lack comprehensive and meticulous systematization, causing much inconsistency of many issues. Based on the previous researches, the present thesis carries out a comparative study of the poetical views of Li Mengyang and He Jingming from the perspectives of the family background, life and work, ideological origin, the Controversy of Li and He, poem creation as well as their living era, aiming to bring forth a more clear picture of their poetical views.The introduction of this dissertation presents an overall review of Li & He's poetics and the related researches. The significance and methodology of the present research is also introduced.Chapter One deals with Li & He's family background, life and work, as well as their associates. The author makes a longitudinal analysis of their living circumstances, family background and teachers and friends'influence which affect their personal characters and literary thoughts.Chapter Two elaborates on the politics and culture trend of middle Ming Dynasty in the light of the literary criticism view of"making comments on public figures and state affairs". The author investigates the external causes of the poetics of the Former Seven Scholars as well as Li & He, focusing on the Trend of Classicism, Emotional Theory and Simulation Theory, in an attempt to reveal the objective factors behind the poetics of the Former Seven Scholars as well as Li & He.Chapter Three discusses the thought origin of Li & He. Firstly, the author analyzes Li & He's grounding in the Confucian school of idealist philosophy from two angles: the Imperial Civil Examinations and their official careers. Then the author makes a contrastive analysis of Li & He's life philosophy and society philosophy which help to explain their literary thoughts.Chapter Four expounds on Li & He's poetics from the four points of view: the conception of literary history, the ideology of'back to the ancients', the social functions of poetry and the understanding of poetry artistry. The author focuses on the specific contents of Li & He's poetics, the causes of their literary renaissance, the essence of sticking with doctrine and the original meaning of lauding ballads. The effect of HeJingming's changing ideology on his poetics is also discussed in this chapter.Chapter Five explores the Controversy of Li & He. The Controversy of Li and He is considered as a result of the responding contact and interspersing echo inside the Literary Archaist Movement The objective causes of this controversy are the political and cultural circumstances of the period. In order to clarify some questionable points concerning the Controversy of Li & He, several closely related debates throughout the Literary Archaist Movement are examined, among which are the debate between Li and Wu, the debate between two Lis and the debate between Li and Zhou. The author examines the content, the essence and the activating factors of the Controversy of Li & He. The content of the controversy concentrates on two sides: the theory of poetry and the interpretation of poetry. The essence of the controversy emphasizes five aspects: different aim of archaism, different path of archaism, different guidance of archaism, different tenet of archaism and different understanding of the social function of poetics. The activating factors involve the differences in people's political view, life of philosophy, temperament, disposition and living region.Chapter Six examines some poems of Li and He,focusing on the two poets'practice of their poetical views. Generally speaking, both of their poems give a full exposure of the major social contradictions, human suffering, war corvee and political ills of that time. But there are distinct differences in the genre and the theme between their poems. The majority of Li Mengyang's works are narrative poems and chorological poems; however, poems written at royal command dominates He Jingming's works. The writing of the two poets also differs in image choosing. He Jingming prefers the image of moonlight, guided by Li Bai's poetics but varying in its nature. Li Mengyang models Du Fu and his poems are characterized by historical significance. Even for the same image, the two poets exhibit different interpretations. Li Mengyang carefully observes the technique of poetry, emphasizing poem refining; on the other hand, He Jingming seeks similarity only based on his creation, not abiding by the technique of poetry. The four sets of poems are examined to illustrate the above arguments.The last part of the dissertation treats the merits and demerits of Li & He's poetics from four angles: responding to the political development of the time, conforming to the trend of the literature of Ming dynasty, probing into the status and the essence of poetry and initiating the most large-scale controversy in the history of poetics criticism. The author also points out the limitations of the previous research: overcorrecting, lacking theory systematization and failing to analyze the archaism object into clear phases.