The Yamato-e In The Middle Of Tang Dynasty

Bai Juyi'poems are considered as an evergreen branch of a flourish tree of Tang poetry. As a great realistic poet, his poems are not only reflected great sentiment and thought, but also depicted social customs of that great era as epic, they are like Yamato-e in the middle of Tang Dynasty.This thesis attempts to study Letian's poems from the viewpoint of characters in Bai's poems. Linking up the many characters in different individual poem, the thesis proposes the concept of"poems of characters". Taking the characters in those poems as the target of the research may help study scholars'rich and colourful mentality at that time in-depth and detect deeper cultural import in order to have more knowledge about civilians, their life and the society of the Middle of the Tang Dynasty. Most previous research on Bai focused on his political thoughts, poetic theory, etc. Although some researchers studied the characters in Bai's poems, most of them only studied his individual poem rather than systematically studying the poems as the whole. This thesis detects the defined"poems of characters"in detail in order that the reader has new expecting view and new understandings of Letian's poems. This research covers overseas influence of Letian's poems along with an additional study of Bai which is being perfected.This thesis is composed of three principal parts.In Part One, the thesis defined the research target, i.e. the relationship between"Yamato-e"and Bai's"poems of characters". The thesis puts forward the concept of"poems of characters"based on the summary and analysis of social tendency and cultural soil in the middle of Tang Dynasty. Meanwhile, it suggests that the characters in Bai's poems of not only refer to the character itself, but also represent a group of people or a certain kind of people. Hence, Bai's poems of characters represent the description of the middle of Tang Dynasty especially the lower and intermediate stratum of the society. On account of Bai's remarkable influence in Japan, this thesis use"Yamato-e", the proper noun in Japanese painting, to describe the impact and position of Bai's poems of characters.In Part Two, the thesis studies characters in Bai's poems concretely in three chapters which are divided diachronically. The first chapter studies the poems which describe people living in Tianbao Age (AD.656-755), like Emperor Tang Xuanzong, Yang Kwerfei, non-Han female musicians, concubines guarding the royal tomb, white-hair maid in Shangyang Palace, etc. Those people did not live at the same time with Bai, but they were contemporaries of him. The second chapter studies ironic poems which reflect Bai's political aspirations. Bai saw dark side of the society and civilians'sufferings and depicts the old man with the broken arm, the old charcoal seller and the rice picking woman etc., in form of poetry. The third chapter studies Bai's personal life based on his poems. As a literary man, Bai describes some people near him into his poems, for example, girl Ioquat player on the river bank, domestic singers and dancers Fansu and Xiaoman, Guan Panpan who becoming old in Yanzi Tower for his lover and Bai's friends Yuan Zhen and Liu Yuxi, etc. Apart from that, Bai wrote a lot of poems as a self-portrait which helps the reader approach the authentic Bai Juyi.Part Three concludes the influence of Bai's poems of characters over Japanese writers such as Shikubu Murasaki in Hei An Age of Japan (AD. 770-1071) and evaluates their value and significance. Bai's poems have great impact on a number of foreign countries. Taking Japan for example, Murasakishikibu's work is affected by their native literary rules, although Bai's poems make her write consciously in this style. In this part, the thesis compares two masterpieces in Hei An Age, The Tales of Genji and The Pillow Book, with Bai's poems.In conclusion, as a great poet in middle of Tang Dynasty, Bai Juyi creates a quantity of abundant, vivid and exquisite characters in his poems which exist eternally since the ancient times. The major purpose and task of this thesis is to research into those characters in Bai's poems systematically and comprehensively.