Xiaohua Poetry Review Study Of North Korea

Written by Hong WanZong, a Korean scholar between17th and18th century, Xiao Hua Shi Ping is a collection of Shi Hua (notes on poets and poetry) which criticizes the poets of the East Kingdom through Goryeo and Joseon Dynasty and their works. The focus of Xiao Hua Shi Ping is put on the contemporary poets and their new style poems. Methodologically, tracing the origin, understanding through personal experience, imagery criticism and comparison are adopted in the book, presenting a close relation with classic Chinese poetics. Holding main idea, diction and meter as three criteria, the confucian poetics as the guideline, Xiao Hua Shi Ping claims the spontaneity of poets and emphasizes the talent and character of poets in poem composing. The book takes on an open attitude towards styles. With the deep impact from Chinese poetry, the poems of Tang Dynasty and Song Dynasty are also included in Korean Shi Hua for criticizing. Theoretically, pro Tang poems and against Song poems is the general case, but the book assumes an ambiguous attitude towards Tang poems and Song poems in specific textual criticism with much difference in the interpretation of poems from classic Chinese poetics. Apart from the tradition of "enriching chat" inherited from Liu Yi Shi Hua, Xiao Hua Shi Ping, representative of the Korean poetics, also presents a distinct national feature which is exactly the essence of the Korean Shi Hua.