Research On Zunqianji

Zunqianji is a collection of Ci poetry of the Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties. It collected ci poems, written by poets form all over the country which lasted morn than 200 years from the Tang Dynasty to the end of the Five Dynasties, so it is rare material for us to understand the early development of ci poetry. Based on predecessors' research achievements, the thesis explores the date of compilation and the purpose of Zunqianji, analyzes the differences of forms and styles which were influenced by the different environments of musical culturare and the common literary practices at that time, and analyzes the characteristics of ways of singing ci poetry in the early stage of the Song Dynasty which reflected in Zunqianji. The thesis includes five parts:the introduction and four chapters.The introduction section introduces the research situation of zunqianji and the research purpose as well as research methods of this thesis.The first chapter combining predecessors' research achievements with new material to analyze concretely that the date of zunqianj became a book should be during YongXi's times in the Song Dynasty (984-987). Although its contents had some changes after compiled, its original appearance has been preserved.The second chapter analyzes in detail the arrangement of styles in Zunqianji. Combining the characteristics of the arrangement of styles with the demanded environment of lyrics in the Dang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties, the author of the thesis holds that the purpose of compiled Zunqianji was for geisha's convenience to sing the ci poetry, and it is a copy of ci poetry for folk singing.The third chapter, with the CiPai in Zunqianji as a clue, explicitly analyzes the source of the CiPai. the creating process, the characteristics of forms and styles and the contents of the Ci poetry in Zunqianji. The author finds that the ci poetry in different periods shows different characteristics in forms and style because they were influenced by different environments of musical culture and common literary practices. In the glorious stage of the Tang Dynasty, the musical culture of the court was prosperity, the styles of the palace literati's pieces were luxuriant, wealthy and extravagant, and the styles changed from poetic forms to ci poetry. In the middle stage of the Tang dynasty, the folk musical culture had a great influence on literati's creating ci poetry. In this period, literati's ci poetry was written in a popular and easy-to-understand language and reflected more description of normal people and the things surrounding them. At the same time, "modern style" poetry had been quite mature. and literati mostly used "modern style" poetry as creating form. However. some literati still composed poems to a given tune of ci. In the later stage of the Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties, literati's ci poetry mainly spreaded at feasting catering and song feast catering whose environment made literati's ci poetry showed worldly enjoyments. The contents of them were more writings of erotic in graceful and restrained styles, and the forms were short lyrics with fast rhythm. ManCi and Changdiao also had certain development.The fourth chapter Sums up the evolution and development track of the forms in the Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties reflected in Zunqianji, the development of the forms and styles which were restricted by the environments of musical culture and the common literary practices of creating and transmitting of ci poetry. Zunqianji collected various forms of ci poetry, reflecting the diversity of the ways of singing the ci poetry in the early stage of the Song Dynasty and it, undoubtedly, gives us many information of the development of ci poetry in the Tang Dynasty and the Five dynasties.