Study Of Modern Poetic Essay

Poetic essay is the most national form of literary criticism in China, the country of poem. From the day of its birth, for numerous poetic essayists' creative effort, and according to its own pattern, poetic essay experienced continually new developments and changes, which can be traced in two trends and four periods. One of the trends was initiated by Ou Yangxiu, and tends to study the poem from the point of the poets and the poems themselves; while the other was initiated by Zhong Rong, and is concerned on the poetic skills and theories. The four periods are following: first, the Song (Jin and Yuan) period, which was featured by the prosperity of the casual literary notes mainly on the poets and the poems themselves; second, the Ming period with the characteristic of the rise of the theory-concerned poetic criticism; third, the most advanced period, the Qing period, which was period of theorization, systematization and specialization of poetic essay; fourth, the falling of the ancient poetic essay, and the rising of the modern one.The historic turning-point of Chinese poetic essay is the new literature movement, which advocated Vernacular literature which in turn produced the modern poetic essay. The modern poetic essay is differentiated from the traditional one by some of its remarkable characteristics, such as openness, the systematic characteristic, dialecticality, and eastheticality. And the differences are revealed mainly four aspects: on the ideology, the sight of criticism, the criticism methods and the theoretical view. Nowadays, in the loud cry of the modernization of the ancient literary criticism, poetic essay, as the representative, which has undergone the transformation from the traditional to the modern, enjoys special significance. It embodies the possibility and practicability of the transformation from an ancient literary theory to a modern one, and provides some reference for the building of Chinese special literary theory.And there are four tendencies of the modern poetic essay: first, it is evolving towards poetics; second, it is combined with aesthetics; third, the comparative study with the foreign poems is paid much attention; fourth, the view is turned from literature to culture. The first two tendencies have come to full form; in the third tendency, the comparative study with the western poems is highly effective, though the comparison with the eastern ones still has a long way to go; though the study from the point of culture hasn't produced any important works, it directs the way for the development of the Chinese modern poetic essay in 21st century, and then has some value of demonstration and inspiration significance.