Natural Description In Ancient Chinese Poetry

Natural scenery, as the most representative and universal subjects in the Early Medieval Chinese poetry (the poetry in Han, Wei, Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties), is intimate with the lyric art and language skills Medieval poetry.The relationship between lyric and nature description experienced an important transcendence in medieval period, before which, affection was strongly emphasized in poetry. As a result, nature were showed in large scale in the poetry forced by this strong emotional influence. After the transcendence, natural, as an object for "enjoying", was described in the poetry in incredible details. Poetry combined the aesthetic experience rising from nature sceneries, forming the lyric language which was rich for rhymes and the beauty of implication. Affection flowed in the sceneries in a hidden way of implication. Since then, natural description became a significant lyric element in poetry.With the change of relationship between lyric and nature description, the upgrading of language skills was also another factor which closely related to nature description. On one hand, the pursuit of "luxury" of language is realized by the nature description in poetry, which stimulated the nature description of poet. The development of poetic language in structure, syntax, etc. also facilitated new describing method. On the other hand, a more expressive and poetic language style was required by the popular fashion of nature enjoyment and description, which therefore promoted the Medieval poetic language to be more delicate.Before foundation of typical poetic language in Tang Dynasties, medieval poetry was an important period of exploration. Based on above two relationships, this paper researched on Medieval poetry from the perspective of nature description. We believe that the specific innovation and development process of Medieval poetic language can be coordinated in this way, which will further reveal the lyric characteristics of medieval poetry, and the process that how these language characteristics are established. Finally, we intend to re-explore the historical significance of medieval poetry.This paper generally includes three segments. First of all, detailed analysis are given to changes of the Emotion - nature relationship in Medieval poetry, the unique description techniques during different phases, as well as their inheriting relationship. In the first chapter, we focus on the rising process of the status of "nature description", in order to analyze the relationship between the description and emotion expression (as essential character) in different stages, with the clues of people’s attitude changing from "metaphor of objects ", "affected by the objects" to "understand the objects"," enjoy the objects". After that, we make detailed analysis on the evolution path of nature description from Han Dynasty to Chen Dynasty in the second chapter, discuss the diversification of description techniques, the development process of the rich skills to experience the objects, based on which, the detailed nature description techniques in early and late stages is revealed. This is the fundamental research of this thesis.Secondly, emphasizes is given to the relationship between the nature description and the poetic language evolution. From the third to sixth chapters of this paper, we analyze landscape description in detail from the perspectives of its imagery, structure, syntax and words. The third chapter of the imagery, as the core factor of poetic language analysis, studies the development path of Medieval poetry, which varies from rough to fine in external level, while from symbolic supporter to highly suggestive in internal level. The following three chapters (the forth to sixth chapters) are arranged with the order from the large level to small level in linguistic structure. The part of structure, describes the structural development of Medieval poetry from a scattered structure, which is lack of rules, to a strict one which is full of rules; The part of syntax, summarizes the syntactic development features of Medieval poetry, which is from simple syntax to the complicated one, from the tendency of prose to an extensive poetic one. Meanwhile, it lists several typical poetic syntaxes with specific illustration; The part of word, explores the verbs, adjectives, color words, reduplication words, function words of nature description, reflects the words character of the enhancement of the refining ability of nature description, poetic language, as well as poetic aesthetic effects. Above four chapters take in-depth research on nature description from the internal imagery to external structure and symbol, in order to explore the contribution of nature description regarding to promoting maturation process of the medieval poetic language. This is the pioneering research of this thesis. Finally, the paper investigates the external factors which influence the development of nature description by the example of the prosodic prose. In the seventh chapter, we place an objective comparison related to the issues that, poetry absorb the nature description arts from the prosodic prose, including words, imagery and structure. On the basis of this analysis from surface to in-depth, we intend to extensively explore the factors borrowed from the prosodic prose in the Medieval poetry, especially in the Southern poetry. This is the extensive research of this thesis.All in all, the thesis evaluates overall characteristics and typical features of different stages of nature description in Medieval poetry, supported by the micro-level analysis of poetic language in the medieval poetry, and in-depth study of features of describing language. More importantly, we aim at establishing a deserved place for nature description in Medieval poetry and its linguistic arts in the history of Chinese classical poetry.