A Study On Xu Angfa And His Poetry

Xu Angfa,a poet in Kunshan,Jiangsu Province,who was the first examinee in Kangxi’s 39 th year(1700),was an important member of the "Fifteen Poets of Jiangzuo".Xu Angfa and others played a certain role in the process of the development and transformation of Qing poetry from the early stage to the middle stage.This paper explores Xu Angfa himself and his poetry creation,grasps his poetic concept,and then inspects the general style of poetry in the early Qing Dynasty.This paper consists of seven parts: introduction,four chapters of the body,conclusion and appendix.The introduction briefly reviews the current situation of Xu Angfa’s research,determines the content of the text,explains the research methods and reveals the significance of the research.The text consists of four chapters:Chapter one examines Xu Angfa’s life and friendship.Emphasis is laid on the textual research of Xu Angfa’s birth and death years and his traveling experience.Chapter two discusses Xu Angfa’s poetic ideas.Since the "three great poets of Jiangzuo",the poetry circle in Jiangsu has been rather depressed,and the appearance of the "fifteen Poets of Jiangzuo" has promoted the vigor of the poetry circle.In his creative practice,Xu Angfa has formed some original ideas,which are helpful to rectify the shortcomings of the poetry circle and effective poetic ideas.Xu Angfa’s views on poetry are mainly manifested in the following three aspects: reiterating the theory of "expressing one’s ambition through poetry" and emphasizing the theory of poetry essence that "unfairness makes one’s voice heard";Strengthen the "method of working poetry",distinguish "learning poetry" from "knowing poetry",advocate "poetry is the voice of the heart" and pay attention to "value more than self-satisfaction" in poetry creation;"Poetry is like human beings","the strength of poetry" and "the wonder of poetry" are the main symbols of the theory of poetry style.The third chapter discusses the subject matter of Xu Angfa’s poetry.This chapter classifies the subject matter of Xu Angfa’s poetry into four categories.That is to say,poems describing people’s situation are mainly about mourning people’s livelihood,sympathizing with the weak and admiring the countryside;The poems of reward and mourning mainly consist of banquet reception,inscription and farewell,celebration and mourning;The poems of detention and servitude mainly consist of recording scenery,describing landscapes and feeling journey;Poems on objects and paintings with the main contents of melting feelings into objects,describing objects and expressing feelings in pictures.Chapter four summarizes the creative characteristics of Xu Angfa’s poems.Xu Angfa was a well-known poet in the early Qing Dynasty,with profound poetry attainments and high artistic achievements.This chapter mainly inspects the creative characteristics of his poems from four aspects: artistic style,poetry form,poetry language and refined character art.The conclusion briefly comments on Xu Angfa’s position in Kangxi’s poetry circle and the significance of his poetry in the literary history.Appendix contains Hui Zhouti’s original works of Red Bean Poetry and Xu Angfa’s works of echoes,80 poems of Palace poetry and a compendium of Xu Angfa’s chronology.