Glimpse. The Qiliang Poetry And Confucian Music Theory Relations

In ancient times, it was believed that the poetry and the music came from the same origin. The poetry was regarded as adherent to the music in a long period, so some scholars argued that poetics originated from the theory of Yue(乐论).However, after the severe collapse of the classical system of li and music in the Qin Dynasty, the separation between The Book of Songs and the music in the Han Dynasty, and the decay of the classical music in Kingdom of Wei and the Jin Dynasty, the poetry and the music had finally disconnected with each other in the Qi and Liang Dynasties. Meanwhile, the position of the music had experienced fundamental change, which brought the new poetics as substitute for the traditional music theories. As the pivotal period in the transforming relationship between the poetry and the music, the Qi and Liang Dynasties presented a very special musical environment, where Confucianism and literature won equal attention, and both traditional and new music coexisted. For instance, Emperor Liang Wu advocated for the revival of the ancient music, while he also actively transformed the Xi-Qu(西曲).It required the scholars of poetics in this period to confront with the conflicts and seesaw battle between the classical culture and vulgar music. It was also in this period that they abandoned part of the traditional music theories in accords with the historical trend for an independent value system of the poetry. Taking Liu Xie and Shen Yue as examples, my thesis will analyze the relationship between the poetics and the traditional music theories within the whole poetic and musical context of the Qi and Liang Dynasties. It will investigate into the problem from both the internal cause-the inherent development rule of the poetics-and the external cause-the specific musical environment of the Qi and Liang Dynasties. Through this analysis, it attempts to shed light upon the transformation of Zeitgeist underlying the changes of the literary conception and the decay of the music theories in this particular historical period.