The Study Of The Tongcheng School’s Tang Poetry Anthologies

As one of the largest academic schools in the Qing Dynasty,the Tongcheng School has always been known for its prose compositions,with a large number of writers,a vast number of works,and a wide geographical spread.Only Liu Shengmu’s book "The Origin of Tongcheng Literature: An Examination" lists646 writers of the Tongcheng School,with 2370 works,which shows the strength of the school.However,if we take a look at the development of the Tongcheng School over the centuries,we can find that the literary achievements of the Tongcheng School not only lie in the creation of prose,but also in the field of poetry creation and poetic theory,whose representative figures,such as Liu Dakui,Yao Fan,Yao Nai,Fang Dongshu and Zeng Guofan,have all written articles or monographs on poetry theory."The poetry anthologies,as an inheritance of poetry theories,have had a profound impact on the poetry world of the Qing Dynasty.As an important vehicle for passing on poetry theory and promoting their poetic outlook,poetry anthologies have naturally become the focus of attention for Tongcheng scholars.In this essay,we take into account the academic background of the mid-to late-Qing period and launch a case study of the selected Tang poems compiled by Tongcheng scholars,summarising their editorial characteristics,their view of Tang poetry,and their reception in later times.Chapter 1 presents an overview of the compilation of selected Tang poems in the Qing dynasty and the collation of Tang poetry literature by Tongcheng scholars.The first section of this chapter introduces the compilation of selected Tang poems in the Qing dynasty in three stages,with the compilation of selected Tang poems in its infancy in the early Qing Shunzhi period and the emergence of many excellent selected Tang poems in the Qianjia period.In the mid-to late-Qing period,the poetry world was slightly dominated by the Song dynasty,and the compilation of selected Tang poems in this period entered a concluding phase,mostly as a result of reinterpreting selected Tang poems by their predecessors.The second section outlines the basic situation of the Tongcheng school writers in the compilation of Tang poetry literature,following the academic lineage of the development of the Tongcheng school.Three representative anthologies of Tang poetry at various stages of the Tongcheng school’s development are selected for case study in Chapter 2,namely Yao Nai’s Poetry in the Modern Style,Chen Pu’s Poetry in Seven Syllables of the Tang People,and Zeng Guofan’s Poetry in Eighteen Poets.Yao Nai’s Modern Style Poems is an anthology of Tang and Song poems,mainly Tang poems;Chen Pu’s The Sevenline Poems of the Tang People is dedicated to the seven-line poems of the Tang people;and Zeng Guofan’s The Eighteen Poets’ Poems is a collection of poems from a wide range of genres,with a clear hierarchy.Each of the three anthologies has its own strengths.The third chapter explores the characteristics of the Tongcheng School’s poetic theory in the selection of Tang poems.The first section outlines its aesthetic inclination towards poetry that is ’grammatical and appropriate’ and its aim of ’fusing the Tang and Song dynasties and restoring the right path’."The compilation of these anthologies of Tang poetry reflects the highest academic ideal of the Tongcheng scholars,who sought to call for the return of the Confucian Way through poetic teaching.The second section analyses the documentary features of the Tongcheng School’s Tang poetry anthologies.These anthologies all examine and cite a variety of documentary sources,and thus have a certain documentary preservation value.Chapter 4 examines the impact of the Tongcheng school of Tang poetry anthologies.Firstly,in terms of their dissemination and classicisation,some of these anthologies of Tang poetry were repeatedly published and printed,spreading over an extremely wide geographical area and still holding a high academic status in later scholarly circles,and this was in fact one of the key factors in the rapid development of the Tongcheng school from a regional school to a national academic school.Finally,the paper selects two anthologies of Tang poetry that were influenced by the Tongcheng school’s view of Tang poetry in the Republican period:Gao Buying’s The Essentials of Tang and Song Poetry and Wang Wenru’s Selected Commentaries on Tang Poetry,and analyses their succession and development of the Tongcheng school’s anthologies of Tang poetry.