A Preliminary Study Of "Tianxue Poetry" In Ming And Qing Dynasties

In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties,the missionaries headed by the Jesuits produced a special form of expressing Catholic culture and ideology by using the traditional Chinese poetry genre,which can be regarded as the product of the cultural practice of so-called “localization”.With the main body of this kind of poetry being replaced by Chinese literati,the combination of “European religious content” and“Chinese poetry form” is more widely rooted in the context of Chinese religious poetry which named Tianxue poetry.At the end of the 16 th century,Michele Ruggieri,a Jesuit missionary,began to learn to write Chinese poetry in the process of adapting to Chinese culture and tried to carry Catholic content with the help of Metrical poetry style.Dozens of hymns and Christian doctrine poems are included in his Chinese poetry collection,which can be regarded as the beginning of the appearance of Tianxue poetry in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.Subsequently,benefit from the expansion of the influence of “Xi Xue” carried from Europe,Catholicism also had a wide influence in the late Ming Dynasty and in the Chinese intellectual community,so as the missionary image and catholic content began to appear in literati's poems,and the understanding and cognition of Catholicism by Chinese literati can be directly reflected in the poems.On the other hand,with the increase of Chinese literati converts,their religious feelings also gradually quest of the faith words expression.Furthermore,based on the motivation of promotion and support of missionary work,Chinese literati began to actively participate in the cultural ministry of Chinese Catholicism,the propaganda text expressed by the core principles of Catholicism in the form of Chinese poetry was actually part of the output of literati's ministry effort.The religious poems written by Wu Li,a native priest in the early Qing Dynasty,are regarded as the symbol of the maturity of Tianxue poems,his poetry creation not only reached an unprecedented height in artistic expression but also achieved a real“Internalization” breakthrough in religious emotion.In recent years,the appeal of the academic world for compiling the “objective history of Chinese religious literature” requires researchers to break away from utilitarianism and respect the value of texts.As a representative of the classical Christian poetry style,Tianxue poetry is one special component of the Chinese religious literature,but the academic circle has not paid close attention,even the concept of it is still reminded in unclear,therefore,it is necessary to sort out and summarize the phenomenon of Tianxue poetry on the basis of specific poetry texts.This dissertation is based on the specific text of the research object,attempts to make a further discussion on the definition and category of Tianxue poetry,then combs the development of this particular literary phenomenon from the perspective of historical objectification.In addition,it will be Combined with the specific text analysis to briefly describes the literary performance and cultural significance of the text.