The Research Of Merchants’ Wives Poetry In Tang Dynasty

It could be easily found out that the poems with the theme of the merchants’wives in the Complete Poetry of Tang take up merely a little part of the whole work.However, considering the long history of the poetry, the number of the poetry withthis theme in Tang Dynasty is much more than that of the previous dynasties. What’smore, the breadth and depth of the poems are unprecedented. Therefore it is worthstudying.There is a certain link between the increase of the merchants’ wives poetry andthe development of the economy. Originally, in Sui Dynasty, the Grand Canal built bythe Emperor Yang formed the hub of communications between the north and the southand thus contributed a lot to the economic development. Later in the Tang Dynasty, aseries of active measures had been taken to promote the economic development. Asthe main body of the commercial activities, merchants also enjoyed many preferentialpolicies then. For example, they were less restricted to do business and relieved fromtax burden. Meanwhile, government officials were forbidden to dispute profits withthe businessmen. All these factors led more and more people to engage in businesswhich directly caused the increase of the merchants’wives.Dealing with nearly all themes, the poems in Tang dynasty also casted a spotlighton the theme of merchants’wives’destiny and spiritual world, a unique scenery in theliterature especially to the male writers. Therefore, nowadays many scholars kept theireyes on it, and wrote articles concerning this subject. However, they only regarded thepoems with the theme of merchants’ wives as auxiliary materials to study themerchants and to support their own views. Presenting the details of the merchants’wives in the Tang Dynasty, this thesis will explain the reasons of the emergence of thepoems with the themes of merchants’ wives and discuss the background, content,artistic characteristics, and the influence on the literature of the later period.There are five parts in the paper. In the introduction, the achievements and thecurrent situation of the study will be summarized; In the second part, the historicaland cultural background of the emergence of the merchants wives theme poetry willbe discussed in terms of economy and the literary development; In the third part, theemotion and the contents of the merchant wives theme poetry will be discussed andmeanwhile the image and the emotional characteristics of the merchant wives willbe presented; In the fourth part, the artistic characteristics of the merchant wives willbe explored; And in the fifth part, the influence of the poems on the poems of the laterperiod will be stated.