Feng Zhi's Collection Of Sonnets And The Taoist Culture

Feng Zhi is a famous poet in Chinese contemporary literature. The Collection of Sonnets he composed in 1940s has had a major impact at home and abroad.To some extent, to say it represents the highest level of sonnets is not too much.The ideas and artistic value this work contains have always appraised by many critics. But so far the research on the Collection of Sonnets is still limited to external impact, and ignores the relationship with traditional culture. Feng Zhi also claimed that he had been influenced by Rilke and Kierkegaard during his creation of the Collection of Sonnets. But it is perplexing that the influence by Rilke and Kierkegaard he accept is quite similar to some connotations of Chinese Taoist culture. This may arouse our suspicion that when he accepted external impact, he might be conscious to accept the part which is similar to Chinese traditional Tao culture.The "introduction" of the thesis mainly reviews the profiles of research on the Collection of Sonnets and divides the seventy-year research into three stages.The "introduction" also summaries the gains and losses of the research.The first chapter is "the Collection of Sonnets:the poetry written in hermit state ".This chapter discusses the commonality between Feng Zhi's thought and Taoism through two aspects which is "contemplateing life in the cottage" and "meditation and materialization".This chapter also shows aloofness in Feng Zhi's thought.The secend chapter is "returning to the simpleness and coming to the nature of the Taoist Culture and the Collection of Sonnets". In this chapter, I think that the psychology for truth in Feng Zhi's thought and the poetic style of simpleness is almost coincides with the Taoist thought of returning to simple. By comparison, we can find that the Taoist yearning for the natural and simple state appears to be activated in Feng Zhi's poetry.The third chapter is "the philosophy of life and death of Taoism and the Collection of Sonnets". On the issue of life and death, Feng Zhi's Collection of Sonnets shows two tendencies that are "life is limited" and "peace with death". These two tendencies can be echoed in the Taoist Culture. But to some extent, the opinion to life and death is different.The fourth chapter is "the Taoist attitude to individuals and the Collection of Sonnets" In the Collection of Sonnets, on the one hand, Feng Zhi emphasized that the individual should maintain a "nameless" spirit. On the other hand, he also stressed that individuals should interact with each other and maintain the state of dialogue, In fact, whether the "nameless" spirit or the state of dialogue can get an echo of some Taoist fragments.This thesis mainly analyzes the Collection of Sonnets's relation with the Taoist Culture through the above four aspects. The model of rgumentation used in this thesis is not the "influencing or been-influenced" type, but the parallel studies which is similar to Comparative Literature, focusing on the similarity and difference between the Collection of Sonnets and the Taoist Culture.