A Study Of Commentary On Du Fu’s Poems In Xu Wenbi’s Shi Fa Du Zhen

Shi Fa Du Zhen written in the twenty-third year of Qianlong(1758)is a enlightening and popularizing anthology of poetry,which absorbed the previous poetics theory and comments and added Xu Wenbi’s ideas.This book had two systems of thirty-three volumes and ten volumes.After being published,it was frequently copied by the bookstore,and has many existing versions.The content of this book was mainly divided into three parts:an overview of basic literary theory,the commentary on Du Fu’s poems,and the analysis of the Tang Dynasty’s test-tie poems.Du Fu was the only poet who was analyzed separately.Xu Wenbi selected 101 Du Fu’s poems,taking into account a variety of poetry genres,with metrical poetry being the most numerous.Xu Wenbi selected 50 five-character regulated verse,27 seven-character regulated verse,9 Yuefu poems,1 long ancient poem,1 short ancient poem,3 consecutive ancient poems,3 songs,6 lines and 1 sigh.Because the examinatorial poetry of the Qing Dynasty required five words and eight rhythmic metrical poetry,Xu Wenbi selected Du Fu’s five-character regulated verse as the most numerous.Xu Wenbi selected and evaluated Du Fu’s five-character regulated verse roughly according to their content categories,including geography,people’s affairs,natural scenes and astronomical seasons.These themes were basically consistent with those of the Tang Dynasty imperial examination.This paper is divided into four chapters,focusing on the preface of Shi Fa Du Zhen and the commentary on Du Fu’s poems,and preliminarily studies Du Fu’s poetics of Xu Wenbi.The first chapter is an overview of Xu Wenbi and Shi Fa Du Zhen.This chapter includes a comprehensive investigation of Xu Wenbi’s life experience,various writings,personality and an introduction to the literature version,style of compilation and main content of Shi Fa Du Zhen.The second chapter explores the social atmosphere and the imperial examination policy during the writing period of Shi Fa Du Zhen,focuses on the practical needs of promoting poetry teaching and providing a reader,explores the purpose of Xu Wenbi’s compilation of the book,and analyzes the influence of the above factors on Xu Wenbi’s commentary on Du Fu’s poems.The third chapter analyzes the content of Du Fu’s poems commentaries in Shi Fa Du Zhen,summarizes the characteristics of Xu Wenbi’s commentaries on Du Fu’s poems,and explores the ideological and artistic tendency reflected in Xu Wenbi’s commentaries on Du Fu’s poems.The content of Xu Wenbi’s commentaries is comprehensive and full,which mainly includes annotating the title and text of the poem,summarizing the gist of the poem,explaining the poetry,judging and discussing the poetic method,and giving evaluation.Xu Wenbi’s commentaries are characterized by emphasis on the structure of rules,altering the words of predecessors,and strong hint of education.When commenting on Du Fu’s poems,Xu Wenbi showed the ideological and artistic tendency of attaching importance to temperament,implicativeness and innovation.The fourth chapter evaluates and comments on the gains and losses of Xu Wenbi’s commentaries on Du Fu’s poems,pointing out that the content of Shi Fa Du Zhen conforms to the direction of the mainstream poetry circle,meets the requirements of the ideological education of the people in that period,and promotes the popularization of Du Fu’s poems and the improvement of Du Fu’s acceptance.However,due to the short compilation time of Shi Fa Du Zhen and the obvious practical intention,therefore,when Xu Wenbi quoted this old comments,he had the shortcoming of not accurate collation.He also followed the predecessors’ words,narrowed Du Fu’s thoughts and distorted Du Fu’s image.