Interpretation Of The Qing Dynasty "book Of Songs" Poetics

The interpretation of the Book of Songs is one of the most important academic categories that has extremely profound connotation. In Chinese history, Confucius was the first person who studied the Book of Songs from the academic point of view. After that, this kind of academic category includes six dominating issues:textual analysis, the elaboration of Confucian thoughts, literary researches, the generalization of research schools and contemporary problems in the academic perspective. The second and third issues thread all the issues. Emphasizing the second or valuing the third has become the touchstone that can differentiate the traditional interpretation of the Book of Songs from modern interpretation.The interpretation of the Book of Songs in Qing Dynasty played a very important role in the overall academic pattern during this period. But because of the intellectual tradition and the academic atmosphere of the times, very many researchers paid a lot of attention to the issue of textual analysis and elaborating Confucian thoughts, and they achieved a lot. On the other side, they seemed to have no respect for the issue of literary researches.Examining the related voluminous materials we will find that there are a lot of conventional poetic wisdoms and poetic ideas in the interpretation of the Book of Songs, especially in the literary perspective study of the book. Since most of these poetic wisdoms and ideas form a non-theory existence and hide in the seemingly haphazard statements, they are often ignored by commentators and their values are not given due attention. It is a very unfortunate thing!The paper finds a new research field between the area of interpretation of the Book of Songs and the area of poetic studying of Qing Dynasty. By studying abundant but fragmentary materials of the interpretation of the Book of Songs, the paper organized five primary and significant poetic issues:ontological issues of poetry, attitudes towards poetic interpretation, obtaining meaning of a text, relationships between Poetry and History, "Pretext"-artistic issue of poetry. Of course, the interpretation of the Book of Songs of Qing Dynasty contains more than the above five issues, but these issues are very important in the poetic system.The importance of ontological issues of poetry is determined by its basic position in the poetic system-only do we figure out the unique inherent regularity of Poetry, we can ensure that all discussion about it running in the right track. Although the scholars of the Book of Songs of Qing Dynasty use the traditional ideas of ontological issues of poetry-the poem articulates what is on the mind intently and the poem follows from the affection-they deepened and developed these ideas contemporaneously, showing the tendency of three main theories:"embodying affection in intention", "replacing intention with affection" and "stressing affection and intention simultaneously". But on the whole, "replacing intention with affection" is most welcome. Among those view of points, Jiao Xun's theory of Poem itself claims more attention:he emphasizes the importance of "affection" in poetics; meanwhile, he emphasizes the musical characteristics of poetry. In addition, Ye Xie advanced a new viewpoint of Poem itselfconsidering the "gentleness and genuineness" as the noumenon of poem. When we connect this idea with his idea of "normativeness and mutatedness", we will clearly see his contribution on the issue of poem itself.The value of poem depends on its poetic meaning (rational meaning and aesthetic meaning) that will be obtained by the reader. The obtaining of the poetic meaning must be achieved by some specific reading activity. So, the attitudes towards reading directly determine the tendency to realize the poetic meaning. The person who is blind obedience to dogmatic authority will miss the "right meaning" because he doesn't use his own head; the person who is consistent with the correct orientation will figure out the true meaning. That is why the scholars of Qing Dynasty strongly emphasize the attitudes towards reading.As far as the obtaining of poetic meaning is concerned, the scholars of Qing contributed two particularly valuable idea—one is "getting the meaning from reading on the reader's own" raised by Wang Fuzhi, another is "research into the original meaning of the poets" raised by Fang Yurun. These two ideas of obtaining poetic meaning are the great contributions to traditional poetic issues. It is the main content that chapter three will talk about.Chapter four discusses two main issues:one is the relationships between Poetry and History; another is the rhetoric arts of poetry itself. These two issues are closely connected with each other. It is the use of the unique art of rhetoric (e.g. "pretext" raised by Fang Yurun) that differentiates Poetry itself from History. This chapter is based on the fact that the Book of Songs can be interpreted as both History and Poetry. By studying related materials, we explore the scholars' basic viewpoints of "Relationships between History and Poetry" and "Poetic Arts".