A Study On Dao Can’s Literary Criticism

The destiny of nation is declining in the late Song Dynasty,and history of literature enters into a phase in which eminent writers are absent but other writers are active.In the field of literary criticism,accumulation,introspection and exploration those characteristics of the times become apparent.As a significant Zen monk of Rinzai in the late Southern Song,Dao Can spends his lifetime between Confucianism and Buddhism.Range of Dao Can’s social intercourse is rather extensive,and he is concerned with literary creation throughout his life,devoting himself to studying the methodology of poems.Integrating with multiple identities of monk,literati,poetics theorist,Dao Can’s ideology characterizes the blending of Confucianism and Buddhism.Dao Can is a representative of literature monk in Southern Song,and his anthology Wu Wen Yin which was once spread abroad is one of the most important Zen corpuses in Southern Song.Since Wu Wen Yin was spread back to China in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China,it has not been taken into account yet.The literature covers a wide range of contents,especially those abundant materials of literary theory included inside,which has great value on the study of literary development and criticism in the late Southern Song.In the background of Southern Song’s literature,this paper treats Dao Can as the study subject,regarding the literary materials in Wu Wen Yin as research priorities.The first chapter starts with investigation of Dao Can’s life travels and spread of his works,and next focuses on his life events where Dao Can studied in Confucian school at an early age,and later he began to learn the Buddhism after abandoning the Confucianism.Besides,the first chapter looks into Dao Can’s wide range of interpersonal communication and tourism between Intellectuals and Zen Buddhist,and analyzes the formation origins where he cites Confucianism into Buddhism and attaches equal importance to them.In addition,the first chapter expounds edition features and literature values of Dao Can’s widespread publications Wu Wen Yin and Liu Tang Wai Ji and lays foundation for subsequent research of literary criticism.As main sections of this paper,the second and third two chapters principally deliver discussions on two parts,poetry theory as well as article theory with the entry point which characterizes ideologically Dao Can’s intersection and accommodation towards Confucianism and Buddhism.In poetics views,Dao Can takes Confucian poetry theory as the criterion,emphasizing that poetry can play a realistic role which is beneficial to social indoctrination as well as charge of morality.Considering elegance,insipidity,refinement as genre criterion to construct aesthetic tradition,he dedicates himself to boosting poetic creating quality in the Song evening.In addition,Dao Can discusses a lot on the methods to create poetry,which concretely involved with many core issues in the history of poetry theory,such as experience,knowledge,revival and innovation,regulation and freedom,“Elastic Deliberation” and “Intuitive Apprehension” and so on.Dao Can highlights the knowledge and experience of poets will have a significant impact on poetical works,and furthermore,he advocates learning from the ancients without restriction to the ancients as well as following rules to reach the state of freedom.Dao Can quotes from Zen monk’s practice experience to discourse the process of poetry writings,and his thoughts about poetry theory not only inherit from classical poetics views,but also make targeted adjustments and expansions when criticizing drawbacks of literary arena in the late Song.The third chapter which is tied up to social morality as well as literary status,discusses on thoughts of Dao Can’s article theory,and next combined with great events such as current political situation of party struggle,revolution of imperial examination,the classical prose movement and the like,this chapter starts with analysis of Dao Can’s self-experience,presenting his writing ideas towards practical styles like four and six proses,policy essay and so forth.The third chapter also states Dao Can’s inveigh towards those eye candy styles of writing,and narrates his creative concepts of prose which comes down in one continuous line of poetics view.At the end of article,this paper delivers a summary of features and values of Dao Can’s literary criticism thoughts.This part mainly overviews the blending of Confucianism and Buddhism which is characteristic in Dao Can’s literary criticism thoughts from the point of diction,application of mentality,content feature,reality concern.With correlation of inheritance and evolution,Dao Can’s literary criticism can be related to plenty of theories just like the poetics of Jiangxi Poetry School,monotony theory,“Huo Fa” theory,hardship inspiring ambition and so on.The literary criticism is worthwhile clearing away drawbacks of literary arena as well as rebuilding aesthetic heritages in terms of contemporary value.In short,this paper attaches importance to observation from the viewpoint of Zen Buddhist towards literary arena,and explores academic value of Zen corpuses abroad.From the view of poetry theory and literary theory,the text discusses on literary criticism thoughts of Dao Can in detail,whereby it comprehends the writing features and theoretical perspectives of literary arena in the late Song further.