The Study Of Relationships Between "Fu" (a Poetic-Prose) And Imperial Examinations And Official Selection In The Late Tang Dynasty

About a hundred of years ago, Mr. Wang Guowei argued that the developing posture of Chinese literature is that "each dynasty has its own literature", so the scholars after words regarded Tang Poetry and Ci Poetry of Song Dynasty as standards of learning , while they paid inadequate attention to Tan Fu (a poetic - prose), which reached its summit at the same time when poetry reached its summit in the Tang Dynasty. This article tries to make a rough summary of the developing train of thoughts of Tang fu, the time involved is the late Tang Dynasty, and this article focuses on the relationship between late Tang fu and imperial examinations and Official selection, aims to analyse the social and cultural atmosphere of the late Tang Dynasty which select officials according to their verses and thus influenced the creation of the late Tang fu and the psychology as well. I hope that through restorative analyses we can probe the developing trace of fu in the late Tang Dynasty and the contributing factor of culture.When we make a rough investigation into fu, which is a social, cultural phenomenon of the late Tang Dynasty and which is directed by this certain society and culture of that time, we can find out , first , that the developing trace of the late Tang fu was not in keeping with the development of late Tang poetry. Tang poetry was completed in the early Tang Dynasty and reached its highest point through the poems written by Dufu. All kinds of poems completed and reached their summits in Mid-Tang Dynasty. Poetic styles of these great poets, such as Li Shangyin, Du Mu, Du xunhe, Pi Rixiu, and so on , who lived in the late Tang Dynasty were various. They chose subjects from the delicate style to poems on history, from recalling antiquity to satirize, and their choices were noticeably resonant with the vogue of the late Tang Dynasty, however, regulated poems which functioned as a means of examination didn't make much achievement. To the contrary, fu of the late Tang Dynasty, a typical examination style, reached its highest point in forms and gained fully development at this time. Thus it enables us to learn roughly that the ancient poetry reached its summit in the Tang Dynasty, fu also at the same time, and the inter-relationship and cause of these two "summit"regulated verse, Whichwas an examination style. Secondly, literature as a symbol of words isn't isolated, it reflects the complicated combination of the feelings of the people at a certain time and the developing course directly. We try to expose the change of psychology of society and culture which consist of all kinds of people who were living busily then by investigating imperial examinations and Mufu, strictly speaking, the latent relationship and action between people which were contained in imperial examinations and Mufu, which were two fundamental social units, and by making use of fu as a record. Regulated poetry is a very strict style, although the purity of this style is gained by sacrificing its feature of literature, we still can learn the narrow outway of the scholars who lived in the late Tang Dynasty from the opposite, and this leads to the analysis of mentality of the scholars so that we can make a further investigation into the complicated social style of the late Tang Dynasty, and try to find out the inherent law of culture, psychology and literature. Regulated verse was created in the early Tang Dynasty with the enthusiasm of contemporary people who were ambitious for succers and in high spirits. The simplicity, jubilation and seeking personal advancement of the original works reflected the annotation of the people that time for the empire and their desire for a bright future, and it is easy to find all of these features in the early works of regulated verse. However, as a measure of examination style, which is characterized by survival of the fittest, not as a form of pure literature, fu was born with negative mark from the very beginning, it closely attached itself to politics and the change of society, so it had a closer relation...