A Study Of LuoYin's Literary Work

Luo Yin was both one of the most important poets and an outstanding essayist in the literary world in the last years of Tang Dynasty for his works of large quantity and good quality. Little study, however, has been conducted on Luo's literary works since the 20th century, and the existing studies have been limited in his satirical poems and A Collection of Slander, without comprehensive and integrative researches. Beginning with his plight all his life, the present thesis examines closely the literary creations of Luo in order to reveal the whole style and features and induce Luo's artistic characters from his works.Born in last years of the age, Luo cherished the ideal of saving the nation. Yet he failed so many times as ten in imperial examinations for different reasons as to be in dire straits and suffer a lot; therefore, he achieved profound impressions and sober understanding on the gloomy reality. As a result, he exposed, criticized and opposed against the darkness in tart and indignant tone. His works were known to be satiric due to his satirical personality. His contribution to the literature of Tang Dynasty, as a matter of fact, lies in the successful command of satirical literature.With the bitter, incisive, lucid and lively style, Luo exposed and criticized the darkness in reality mainly by blazing his extreme anger, reflecting on the ancient events or implying the morals in objective materials. Luo was better at poetry of modern style, especially lushi with seven characters on each line, through which he commented on the reality in simple and easy words, heralding the style of writing in literature of Song Dynasty.A Collection of Slander was the representative works of Luo's essays, manifesting his talent in satire more concentratedly and more distinguishingly. Exposing and critisizing the dark reality extensively, it mirrored the distorted society in comprehensive and authentic way. At the same time, A Collection of Slander was one of the most characteristic works in the arts which gave an impetus to the maturity of satires with profound theme, flexible forms and short length.Luo Yin succeeded and developed the simple dialectics by Laozi, and expounded accordingly the social and historical phenomena, mainly the dialectic relationship among prosperity and decline, rise and fall, and stability and turbulence, in his another important collection of works—Essays on Unity of Opposites, which showed the distinctive tendency towards the Confucianism in Luo's thoughts.Studied comprehensively, Luo's entire style of writing found itself in all his literary works; that is, the guiding idea of revealing and criticizing the reality, the will at saving the age and the nation, the satirical style of attacking the evil, and the philosophical implications in seeing through everything.