Wu Cheng’s Friendship And His Poetic Thoughts

Wu Cheng was a famous thinker,educator,and poet in Jiangxi during the late Song and early Yuan periods.He is very knowledgeable,and has many friends,and has written a number of poems.At the time,many people asked Wu Cheng to write prefaces,titles,and postscripts for their collection of poems.From the prefaces,titles,and postscripts of these poems,we can get Wu Cheng’s unique insights on poetry.The end of the Song Dynasty and the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty is an important period for the transformation of ancient Chinese poetry.For Wu Cheng’s role and influence in the poetry of this period,the current academic circles have studied it from the larger era environment,but less to analyze the origin and influence of Wu Cheng’s poetic thoughts with Wu Cheng’s friendship.Therefore,this article will start from the perspective of the relationship between Wu Cheng’s friendship and his poetic thoughts,discuss exchanges between Wu Cheng and other poets of the time in the field of poetics,and finally clarify the origin,development and development of Wu Cheng’s poetic ideas,and his influence.The introduction summarizes the current research status of Wu Cheng in academic circles firstly,and analyzes the deficiencies in the research of Wu Cheng’s poetic thoughts.Secondly,determine the research methods with statistical analysis and close reading of literature: first of all,sort out Wu Cheng’s more important objects of communication in the field of poetics,and the poetic activities that Wu Cheng is involved in.Based on this,analyze the development process of Wu Cheng’s poetic thought in detail.The first chapter divides Wu Cheng’s friends into three groups based on the regional background: Jiangxi,Jingshi,and other regions.And record the time,place,and reason of Wu Cheng’s interaction with these friends in detail.Compiled correspondence between Wu Cheng and these friends,focus on examining the poems,prefaces,titles,and postscripts of Wu Cheng’s contacts with these friends.Based on statistical analysis,It can be seen that Jiangxi is the most concentrated area for Wu Cheng’s poetic friends.The second chapter summarizes the poetic activities involved in Wu Cheng,including participating in the same topic to write poetry,prefaces for his friends’ singing and poetry collections,prefaces for his friends’ poetry of travels,and various poetic activities around the imperial examinations.The content presented in this chapter further reinforces the conclusion of Chapter one,that the central figures of these activities were all Jiangxi poets at the time.The third chapter analyzes the origin of Wu Cheng’s poetic thought firstly:Zhu Xi,the older poet Zeng Yuanyi and Gan Yong in Wu Cheng’s hometown are main leaders in Wu Cheng’s poetics,Secondly,based on Wu Cheng’s poetic friends who have been collated in the previous article,then chose friends from inside Jiangxi and outside Jiangxi who had an important influence on Wu Cheng’s poetics,and pointed out their completeness and strengthening of the poetic ideas that Wu Cheng encountered in his early years.Finally,on the basis of the discussion in the first two sections of this chapter,Wu Cheng’s poetic ideas are summarized,including: sincere and natural poetic emotions;rigorous internal and explicit poetry rules;clear and understandable poetry language.Based on the conclusions discussed in the previous three chapters,the fourth chapter analyzes the influence of Wu Cheng’s poetic thoughts outside and within Jiangxi.Through statistics on the number of Wu Cheng’s friends and analysis of Wu Cheng’s correspondence with friends,it can be seen that Wu Cheng’s poetic thought did not have a large impact outside Jiangxi at that time.However,with Wu Cheng’s increasing academic skills and the experience of being repeatedly summoned by the court,Wu Cheng’s influence within Jiangxi was increased.More and more poster poets have invited Wu Cheng to write a preface for his collection of poems.Therefore,with these prefaces,Wu Cheng played an important role to promote the formation of Jiangxi’s fresh and natural poetic style.