Tang Dynasty Monk Literary Criticism

The poem-monk group in the Tang Dynasty is a special creation group in the Tang Dynasty literature history. Poem-monks not only created poems consciously, but also commented on poems, they were the combination of creation subject and literary review subject. But in a long time the relevant researches mainly focused on poem-monks creation analysis, such as their life history, their relations, and their creation art. Comparatively there are less works on the literary review of poem-monks in The Tang Dynasty. This paper selects "literary review of the poem-monks in The Tang Dynasty" as the research object, and investigates several important topics, including: the affirmance of the "poet" figure of the poem-monks in The Tang Dynasty, the poem-monks literary review form, the category of literary review, and the poetics system of a single poem-monk reviewer.The appearance of the Tang Dynasty poem-monk literary review were not only correlated with the development of Buddhism and poem, but also correlated with the affirmance of the poem-monks' "poet" figure. Because only poem-monks thought themselves as poets, they would create poem, and would comment on their own works and the other people's works. Only the poet figure were recognized extensively by the society, the literary review of poem-monks would have social influence. The consciousness of creation and review are the material embodiment of the affirmance of the poem-monks' "poet" figure, and a series of poem-monks' works showed the consciousness. In different history stage, poem-monks adopted different literary review methods. Huijing who lived in the early Tang Dynasty reviewed poem by means of anthology; in the middle age Tang Dynasty, Xuanjian who lived in the afternoon Tang Dynasty criticize poems by taking passages; in the middle-late age Tang Dynasty, the poets commented on poets by utilizing the form of poetry rule. The literary review categories adopted by the Tang Dynasty poem-monks are relevant with both the traditional literary review and Buddhism, especially on the utilization of three categories: the artistic conception, class and power. From form to category, the Tang Dynasty poem-monks literary review is an innovation on the foundation of the Six...