Tang Poetry Dusk Image Research

Dusk is the moment when touches the poet’s emotion most easily. It entered human’s visionearly in “the Book of Songs”, and poems intoning dusk image by offspring poets exist all thetime. Description of dusk image originated in the pre-Qin when established two themes of dusklovesickness and journey far, developed in Wei-Jin, matured gradually in the Southern andNorthern Dynasties, and fully formed in Tang Dynasty. The description of dusk image byoffspring poets is within the scope of those in Tang Dynasty.This paper tries to study the dusk image in detail and consists of introduction, main body,and conclusion. The introduction mainly discribes the research situation of dusk image andorigin of this paper, enumerates books and papers on dusk image, analyzes the deficiency ofexisting research, and does statistics for dusk image according to electronic version of “QuanTang Shi”.The subject of this paper is main body which contains three chapters. The first chapter isdivided into two sections. Section one introduces the development and origin of dusk image.Why literati love dusk image is discussed from some aspects, such as philosophical idea ofharmony between man and nature, value orientation of positive attitude, special physiologicalfeelings in evening, intense awareness of time, concurrent sadness and warm, and so on. Sectiontwo discussed a traceable development of the dusk image before Tang Dynasty, i.e., pre-Qin isthe newborn period, Wei-Jin the develop and evolve period, and Southern and NorthernDynasties the initial stereotyping period.Chapter two discusses the emotional connotation of dusk image from four aspects. First,human touch: dusk image demonstrates not only the intersexual dusk lovesickness, but also thesentimentality for leaving and missing each other after leaving between friends. Second, feelingsof staying long in a strange land: man in an alien land misses home at dusk when birds fly backand cattle and sheep down the hill. Moreover, the poets feel the passage of time in the dusk buttheir ideal is elusive, which lead to the plaint in the evening. Third, plaint about life and history:sunset indicates the end of the day while our life passed when the sun rises in the east and sets inthe west, which lead to the plaint of poets in the evening. Also, eternalness of sunset is againstthe short of history, which lead to the plaint on history. Fourth, happiness of harmony: poets love dusk for its sad and beautiful with soft light and quiet and peaceful atmosphere. It has joys ofboth enjoying nature and leaving away from officialdom.Chapter three discusses the dusk image group in Tang poetry. The timeliness and spatialityof dusk determine that dusk image is all-embracing. There are intensive imagery in poems ondusk image. This paper discusses fallen flowers, green hill, cicada, climbing, unlatch doorimages from visual, auditory, and kinesthetic aspects according to image classification inpsychology. Besides, the emotional connotation and unique implication expressed when theseimages combine with dusk image are analyzed.The conclusion summarizes several fixed modes of expressing dusk image emotion in Tangpoetry: sad from dusk, joy from dusk, and extreme joy begets sorrow, and describes briefly thestage characteristics of dusk image in the early and high Tang and the middle and late TangDynasty, respectively.