Suzhou Scholars' Poetic Life "Poetry Change

Suzhou is a famous city in the south of the Yangtze River with a long history,which is adjacent to Taihu Lake in the west. Its water and land transportation arehighly developed, so does its civilization. Till the middle of the Ming dynasty, Suzhouturned into a special region of the whole country’s politics, economy and culture.Due to business and culture prosperous, natural and social environment combiningharmoniously, it becames a poetical place for literati. After Chenghua and Hongzhi,Suzhou’s political atmosphere, business conditions, living environment, life style andlife concept are all changed, including literati’s interest in life, the way and habitus oflife. For instances, Tang Yin, one of the Suzhou Four Scholar, Wang Zhideng,representative of Suzhou shan ren, leading the literary world for thirty years afterWen Zhengming, and Feng Menglong, the master of popular literature. Althoughthey are not famous for political circles, they have a good reputation in the literaryworld. And emergence of this phenomenon is closely related to Suzhou’s regionalfeature and era spirit. Thus, we need to discover these civilian literati’s life situation,lifestyle and mentality of implicit in city. Moreover we need to explore the impact ofcivil life and popular literature on their poetry composition, analyze new changes oftheir poetry, such as the aspect of the theme and subject matter, language style andaesthetics consciousness and so on. They show the transformation of the poetry ofMing dynasty from elegance to vulgarity.Chapter1discusses Suzhou is the place of poetical life. It investigates andanalyzes about two aspects, historic times and regional space. It indicates the processthat Suzhou became poetical representative of southern city. In additional, itdiscusses the specific characteristics of Suzhou as poetical habitation place, asSuzhou gardens in Ming dynasty are Suzhou literati’s poetical habitation site, Suzhoufolk art forms in Ming dynasty are the forms of entertainment for literati, and literatiare skilful at painting and calligraphy. Chapter2discusses the relationship betweenpoetical life and literati in Suzhou. Firstly it discusses the situation of poetical life ofTang Yin, Wang Zhideng and Feng Menglong. The content involves their family backgrounds, personal experiences and friends, emphasis on their way to make aliving by art and living conditions. Mostly, they build gardens, like gathering withfriends,and visiting places of interest. Secondly it discusses the impact of poetical lifeon literati, such as the role which poetical life plays in literati’s art skill and theformation of the mentality of implicit in city, the situation of poetical life makingliterati skillful on poetry, calligraphy and painting, and Suzhou forming excellent artand academic circle. And literati’s mentality of implicit in city come into being.Chapter3discusses new changes of literati’s poetry, from the aspects of the themeand subject matter, language style, aesthetics consciousness and artistic expression.For example, there are descriptions of urban life in Suzhou of the mid-late Mingdynasty, expression of daily trifles of literati and reveal of pure love between couplesin Wu area in Tang Yin, Wang Zhideng’s poetries and Feng Menglong’s folk songs.Their poetry wholly represents the tendency of personality, secularization andpopularization, and transformation of the poetry of Ming Dynasty from elegance tovulgarity.In a word, their poetical life and poetry composition shows Suzhou’s civilliterati’s implicit life in city and the phenomenon of poetry’s new change fromelegance to vulgarity. It also shows new features of Suzhou, person and poetry in themid-late Ming Dynasty. As a matter of fact, this is a new development in the processof urbanization in the south, new appearance of literati and new changes of poeticcircles in the mid-late Ming Dynasty beside Suzhou itself. It has important andfar-reaching significance.