On "Poetic Praises" In "Wen-hsin Tiao-lung"

Based on "Poetic Praises" in "Wen-hsin tiao-lung", this research extract the "Poetic Praises" from every chapter of the book. This essay starting from the origin,the literary forms,the thought-form within and the mode of thinking, in order to study the "Poetic Praises" vertically as a whole. The first step is to differentiate the "Poetic Praises" from "Zan", which will be used as an important reference on the research of "Poetic Praises". The "Poetic Praises" is very important in the history of "Zan", which was established by Liu Xie by mixing and innovating different thoughts. The second step is to date from the origin of "Poetic Praises", and then differentiate the "Poetic Praises" with "Shi Zan" and " Gatha", in order to draw the conclusion that the "Poetic Praises" originated from the "Legend of the Distinguished Women" written by Liu Xiang and Liu Xin. The "Poetic Praises" to "Wen-hsin tiao-lung" and "Chung Said" to "Legend of the Distinguished Women" have a similar writing style. The "Poetic Praises" has a symmetrical structure, using the spoken way of bi-xing and comparison. Among the academic propositions on "Poetic Praises", this essay use M-H-Abrams'theory as an approximate guide, and find out four academic propositions correspond with the four elements of literature:universe, artist, work, audience. Work and universe:it agrees with Divine Reason, and penetrates the political order; work and artist:the spirit enters the world by way of images, thus the multitudes of feeling and emotion are born in literary writing; work:feeling matches vitality, language matches form; work and audience:good books on the shelves, are for good critics to read and judge. Associate the four academic propositions with Liu Xies' literary theory. From Liu Xies'historical background and the contact of "Poetic Praises", we can drew the conclusion that the "Poetic Praises" has its own way of thinking, which is featured as metaphorical, eclectic and dialectical. The writing style of "Poetic Praises" is the frist one in history of literary critiques, and it plays an important role in "Wen-hsin tiao-lung":repeats the meaning described in texts at the beginning; expressing new opinions; show writer's attitude, and it has great influence on "Twenty-four Grades of Poetry".