Zhong Rong Liu Xie Poetics Comparison

ShiPin and WenXinDiaoLong are famous ancient works on literary theory. ShiPin specializes in poem of five words. WenXinDiaoLong makes comments on all types of writing, but pay great attention to poem. Formerly, critics attach little importance to the similarities and differences of their literary ideas. In the 1980's, XingShanHong, a Japanese scholar, thought that there exists contrariety in conception of literature between LiuXie's WenXinDiaoLong and ZhongRong's ShiPin, which led to a heated dispute between Chinese and Japanese scholars. The current thesis renewedlydiscusses this problem from a new point of view------ZhongRong's and LiuXie'sopinions about ChuCi, and try to make a thorough and systematical study about the similarities and differences of their viewpoints on poem and about the cause.of these.The thesis is made of three sections besides the introduction and the conclusion.The first section discusses ZhongRong's and LiuXie's views obout the essence of poem. Before Qin dynasty, critics thought poem convey poet's aspiration. Then in XiJin dynasty, LuJi thought poem convey poet's feelings, which break away from outdated traditional modes of thought. ZhongRong and LiuXie are affected by the two kinds of conception of literature. They all advocated elegance and paid great attention to emotions. To a certain extent, they all broke away from traditional modes of thought. In this respect, they have no distinct difference.The second section discusses ZhongRong's and LiuXie's comments on the poets belong to the group of ShiJing. ZhongRong thought the poem of five words stem from ShiJing and ChuCi. He thought highly of CaoZhi, LuJi and XieLingYun. Three of them are all belong to the group of ShiJing. LiuXie inherited the traditional Confucian literary viewpiont and valued the elegance of ShiJing. He also thought highly of the three poets. In this respect, their viewpoints are similar.The third section discusses ZhongRong's and LiuXie's viewpoints on ChuCi. The characteristic of ChuCi is that it has intense feelings, much imagination, flowery language and natural expression, which ZhongRong and LiuXie valued. As far as the influence on literature is concerned, ZhongRong and LiuXie thought ShiJing and ChuCi were the same important and thought both of them should be studied by poets. All these have shown they attached great importance to ChuCi. The reason of that is as follows: First, they had the same viewpoints on essence of poet. Second, they all had Confucian and Taoist school thought. Moreover, they were all affected by the prevailing literary custom of their times, and they all broke away from traditional modes of thought when they inherited them. As far as all these are concerned, their viewpoints have no basic difference.