The Development Of Confucian Poetics In Modern Times

Chinese traditional culture encountered unprecedented challenges in the early 20th century of modern tempestuous China because of the collapse of autocratic monarchy and the influx of Western culture. As a traditional mainstream culture, Confucian poetics faced a serious question -how to continue and develop in this background. This thesis attempts to show a new development of Confucian poetics in the modern literature history by studying the influence of Confucian tradition on Wu Fangji's poems and poetics concept. Wu Fangji's exploration and creativity in the field of poetry made more contributions to the Confucian Poetics' inheritance and innovation. And his poetry took an important impact on the later generations. In the 21st century, some phenomena appear in China and abroad such as cultural transformation and revitalizing Confucianism. In this situation, the meaning of this thesis is to analyze the development of Confucian tradition in modern poetics and to show the charm of Chinese traditional culture by researching on Wu Fangji's poems. This paper is divided into two parts. The first part is to analyze the inherent spirit of Wu Fangji's poetics whose inner spirit essence came from Confucianism. The poetics ideas of Wu Fangji who called himself "white house poet" linked inextricably with Confucianism, not only his thought of "poetic natural literature" but also "poetry is Taoism". The second part explained the Wu's fierce response to practical difficulties from four levels by reading the texts of Wu's carefully and gave a further understanding about the continuation of Confucian poetics in Modern society.