A Research To Yong Tao Who Lived In Later Tang Dynasty

Yong Tao is a famous poet in early days of later Tang Dynasty, whose poems are praised highly by people. It is a great pity that many poems of his got lost during handing down, so nowadays just more than 130 poems exist. However, we can also know the general style and features of his works from the existing poems.This paper is intended to research Yong Tao and his poetry, including two parts. The first part is textual criticism contents, which studies several questions about Yong Tao's year of birth and death and his association. As far as his birth and death date concerned, there is no recordation on all the documents and there are various academic views of it. The author of this paper analyzes various points, and comes to a conclusion that what Wen Yiduo and Wang Anshi say are reasonable. Wen Yiduo says that Yong Tao was born in 805. And Wang Anshi says that Yong Tao died in the period of Dazhong when he was in the position as a provincial governor in Jianzhou. Yong Tao had association with a great many contemporaries literators, officers and monks.The portion of this textual research investigates Yong Tao's association and making friends with 24 persons including Bai Juyi. Then we can understand Yong Tao's life experience more detailedly, meanwhile we can also know the influence on his poetics and style from his association.The second part is poem discussion contents. It discourses upon the sense and art features of Yong Tao's poems, which includes four aspects: worrying about the country, being sad for the current time, and concerning about the people's livelihood;having a plaint for no chance and intoning his affection;nostalgia for hometown and charming and gentle scenes;singing for deep friendship. As far as the art features of Yong Tao's poems concerned, this paper has a research on this from three aspects : Fristly, the main style of Yong Tao's poems is clear and smooth, ease and quiet. Due to the influence of Yao Jia and Bai Juyi's poesy , there is clear and smooth feature in Yong Tao's poems. Meanwhile Yong Tao was also influenced by buddhism and taoism, so his poems also show the ease and quiet. Secondly, Yong Tao was adept in Modern-style Poetry. All his existing poems are Regulated Verses and quatrains except four ancient poems. This paper analyses and discusses about the two types, namely Regulated Verses and quatrains. Thirdly, the representation of Yong Tao's poems varies a lot, and the most prominence is taking writings as poem and the repeat of words, which are analysed well in this paper.