Technology And Poetry In Ancient China: A Probe Into The Relationships Between Them

With technology and poetry in ancient China as its object, this Ph.D. dissertation intends to discuss the influence the relationships between technology and poetry in ancient China make upon the living and being of Chinese people. Specifically, technology means the technology of living in the material sense and spiritual sense; poetry means the dimension of one's poetic beings. Ancient China was the one that enjoys the most advanced technology in the word and a wealth of poetic beings. By then, poetry and technology were harmonized with each other. However, the ancients' fear of and anxiety about technology, together with the conscious of succour emerging from the technological epoch, all came into being. This dissertation aims at probing into the poetry-to-technology relationships concerning the above-mentioned fear, anxiety and conscious. Similarly, the poetry-to-technology communication is covered in it.The research this dissertation makes on the poetry-to -technology relationships in ancient China is currently a topic of general interest. The topic of general interest today refers to the concern scholars show over the loss of poetry caused by the pressure of technology in scientific times; it also refers to a pursuit of a road to salvation scholars make in modern times. This dissertation intends to provide a background and reference schema for the contemporary scholars' call and reconstruction of poetic beings.The dissertation consists of 9 chapters.Chapter 1 "Poetry-to -Technology Relationships in Pragmatics onTechnological Words" discusses appellative words' interaction with poetry in terms of literal meanings and implied meanings, and shows technology and poetry's cognation and identity.Chapter 2 "Incorporation and Separation of Technological Subject and Poetic Subject" discusses the state of combination of technological subject and poetic subject into one and the separation of one into two. It also describes the historical approaches of technological subject to generation of poetic subject, representing various positions of technological subject and poetic subject in power of discourse, and exploring the differences in value of technology and poetry in ancient Chinese culture.Chapter 3"'Wen: A Poetic and Technological Texture of the World" examines the technological texture of "Wen" as the world's poetry and the summary of all phenomena that is a core category of Confucian discourse. It also covers the effect "Wen" has on the poetic generation of literary poems.Chapter 4"The Combination of Poetry and Technology into One: A Way to All Miracles" discusses the racist understanding of the supreme poetry and technological texture of the world by centering around Lao Zi and Shu Shi's Taoist interpretation of "a way to all miracles". Specifically, "miracles"(^)exist both in the Taoist field called "a way to all miracles" and in people's daily life.Chapter 5 "Poetry-to-TechnoIogy Relationships in the Eyes of Confucians" mainly covers the poetry-to-technology relationships in the eyes of Confucians with Confucius' status quo in technology and poetry as its core. Generally, Confucians stress poetry and neglect technology, thus making outstanding contributions to the dimension of poetry in ancient China. For example, their "mean" principle and poetic demonstration of "Wen" have both become major themes of poetry in ancient China.Chapter 6"Deification and Sanctiffcation: A Banishment of Technology" discusses the deification and sanctifieation of technology in ancient China. It argues that the sage or the imperial power is in effect deified and sanctified thoughtechnology is superficially deified and sanctified. That is to say, when technology is deified and sanctified, technology is in effect banished from the deified or sanctified discourse. As a result, technology does not tread the path of the central discourse of times.Chapter 7" Symphony of Simplicity and Beauty" discusses the absurdity that happened when simplicity, poverty, extravagance and beauty were semanticly imported in ancient China. The complicated relationships between technology and poverty, poverty and simplicity, simplicity and poetry, technology and richness, richness and beauty, beauty and poetry are all included in this discussion. It presents a new mode of thinking to an understanding of such traditional poetic assumptions as "a poet in adversity is apt to develop", making detailed inquiries about the reasons why ancients think that poverty makes for poetic excellence.Chapter 8"Crime and Punishment in the Era of Technology" touches upon Lao Zi and Zhuang Zi's critique and evaluation of technological times and technological culture caused by an originality of human technology. It argues that for Lao Zi and Zhuang Zi, technology is a criminal that does much harm to the poetic living of humans; therefore, Lao Zi and Zhuang Zi both make an appeal to human beings for destroying technological times and cultures so as to return to the pre-technological times of human beings i.e. primitive poetic homelands.Chapter 9"Salvation Thought: Deconstructing Technological Subjectivity" discusses the Taoist salvation thought on human beings of technological times. Tao has various discourses about it, such as an ideal of "small country, less people", a behaviorless, useless, thoughtless and speechless thinking, and a propaganda of absolute freedom. These discourses of Tao center around a salvation of humans: its way to salve is to deconstruct the technological subjectivity so that technology can be a subjectless conscious and a supreme technology like the universe. However, this kind of salvation brings about no result: it only benefits deepening technology.On the whole, this dissertation concludes that poetry-to. -technology relationships in ancient China are harmonized with each other, but the harmony onlymeans that technology is subject to poetry. It terms of technology a history of poetry-to-teehnology relationships of China is that of pathos that relates the marginalized technology. In this sense, a relaxation of tensions between poetry and technology today should not take the harmony between poetry and technology in ancient China as its paradigm, but it can be inspired by this kind of harmony. What this dissertation does may provide a macro-cultural context of poetry-to-technology relationships for researches into poetry-technology-relationships in poetics, aesthetics and literary theory of ancient China. This context can further studies of poetry-to-technology relationships in specific literary and artistic disciplines. It can contribute a lot to comparative culture and poetics researches in terms of perspectives and methods.New ideas this dissertation brinp forth are as follows: 1) in the history technological cultures, man stepped into the technological epoch twice;2)in ancient times, technology and poetry bore cognateness and identity;3) discourse paradigms and value systems about poetry and technology of ancient China are first reconstructed;4)the recognizable paradox and absurdity are first articulated when ancients combine simplicity, beauty and technology into one; and 5)the Taoist thinking on crime and punishment in the technological era is systematically combed out ,and Zhuang Zi's metaphor about the death of muddiness is therefore interpreted.