On Yip Wai-Lim's Study Of Classical Chinese Poetics

Professor Yip Wai-lim, the famous American sinologist, has a profound attainments in Classical Chinese poetry and Taoism with a great number of relative works. In his works he presents both a modern academic perspective in western context and a solid knowledge of Chinese culture. Therefore it can be concluded that his main principle in research is mutual understanding and interpretation. Based on this principle he consistently aims at investigating object of study with new perspective and by new means in order to explore its potential significance. This thesis draws out his studies on Classical Chinese poetics from his extensive studies, and expects to sort his study in this area out and have a precise and appropriate conclusion. It focuses on interpreting the theoretical logic in his study, by which Prof. Yip establishes his unique and systematic theory on poetics.This thesis, following Prof. Yip's thinking of study, starts from the linguistic criticism of Chinese language, and then emphasizes on his well-known Model Criticism which can be divided into two parts, one is the study out of literary such as on philosophy, model of thinking and aesthetic preference, and the other is literary itself including study on image in text and on communication based on meaning of the text. These three main parts constitute his systematical theory of poetics. His theory is characteristic of the Taoism as its base, so it can mix background-oriented criticism and text-oriented criticism. Here Prof. Yip makes a full use of traditional thoughts to not only modernize the tradition, but also solve the predicament of modern theory.This thesis is based on Prof. Yip's original works of study on poetics, translation and even poem collection, meanwhile compare those works with classical Chinese literary criticism, contemporary authoritative theory in China and other oversea studies in this field. The comparison indicates the similarities and difference between Yip's study and others', from which we are able to trace his theory back to its starting point and trail its development. In the end there's an evaluation to his theory, measuring its merits and demerits.