Poem Prefaces Of The Tang Dynasty Study

This paper is an arrangement and study of Poem Prefaces during the 340 years in the Tang and The Five Dynasties. The so-called "Poem Preface"is a kind of prose style which takes The Preface to Mao's Poems as its source and gradually combines with the writing of poems. It usually happens at the same time with ancient poetic writing and is finished by the poet personally; it is between the title and the text of the poem and has the literary meaning of narrating the creative background, clarifying the substance of the poem, replenishing the content of the poem, guiding the readers to thinking, and so on. This study consists of basic study, subject study and comprehensive study.Basic study consists of the intruduction, the first and the second chapter. It is the premise and foundation of researches on Poem Prefaces in the Tang Dynasty.The intruduction discusses the origine, present study situation and conceptual connotation of Poem Prefaces. The earliest philological meaning of "Preface" is not concerned with style and it refers to "the wall which is used to divide the houses". The earliest extant preface is The Preface to Mao's Poems, which first connected "poem" with "preface". As a style, the acquisition of literary indepengdent quality of Poem Preface was marked by the appearance of Wen Xuan. With regard to concept, Poem Prefaces have differences of the external forms between prefaces written by oneself and prefaces written by others, long prefaces and short prefaces, public prefaces and private prefaces. At present, the study of Poem Prefaces is quite weak.The first chapter is the general study of Poem Prefaces in the Pre-Tang Dynasty. The extant Poem Prefaces from the Han Dynasty to the end of the Sui Dynasty is totally 136 articles, consisting of the Jin Dynasty 76 articles which account for 56 persents. Cao zhi's Poems Composed for Imperial Court·Bingshu is the first Poem Preface whose author is determined clearly in the literary history. The Jin Dynasty is the main body of Poem Prefaces in the Pre-Tang Dynasty, Tao Yuanming is the Poem Preface writter who has the largest amount and the highest achievement. The subjects of Poem Prefaces in the Pre-Tang Dynasty mainly consist of presenting each other and going sight-seeing after banquet, recalling with emotion and stating aspirations, tasting persons and discussing articles, elegy and mourning the death, and so on. They are mostly inherited and developed by Poem Prefaces in the Tang Dynasty.The second chapter counts and outlines the fundamental situation of Poem Prefaces in the Tang Dynasty. First, this chapter altogether counts up the number of Poem Prefaces in the Full Collection of Tang Poems, the Full Collection of Tang Proses and A Revised and Enlarged Complete Collection of Tang Poems which is chiefly edited by Chen Yixin. The total of Poem Prefaces in the Tang Dynasty is 859 titles, 930 articles. They are actually 930 ancient proses with numerous and jumbled contents, different length and various skills. Secondly, according to the stages of Tang poems study, this chapter makes a macroscopic quantitative description of Poem Prefaces in the Early Tang Dynasty, the Prosperous Tang Dynasty, the Mid-Tang Dynasty and the Late Tang Dynasty: the Early Tang Dynasty is the inheriting stage, the Prosperous Tang Dynasty is the developing stage, the Mid-Tang Dynasty is the prosperous stage, the Late Tang Dynasty is the declining stage.Subject study includes the third, the fourth, the fifth and the sixth chapter. It is the classified study of the main contents of Poem Prefaces in the Tang Dynasty.The third chapter studies Poem Prefaces whose subjects are presenting at parting and going sight-seeing after banquet. Among the Poem Prefaces in the Tang Dynasty, this kind has the largest amount, extensive participation, generous and complicated contents. There are near 500 Poem Prefaces of this subject in the Tang Dynasty, accounting for 58 percents of the total of Poem Prefaces in the Tang Dynasty; almost all the people in the various classes of the society, including emperors, ministers and scholars, are concerned with this kind of Poem Prefaces. So, a variety of feelings, such as prosperity and decline of state power, excitement and straits of imperial examination, broadness and bumpiness of official career, happiness at meeting and reluctance at parting, are all reappeared by this.The fourth chapter studies Poem Prefaces of religious subjects. Poem Prefaces related to religion is another big kind of Poem Prefaces in the Tang Dynasty. The Tang Dynasty has an open thought, Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism blend and coexist. Poem Prefaces in the Tang Dynasty almost reproduce all sorts of numerous and complicated religious belief activities of this time in all-round way. Doing good to society, the national economy and people's livelihood of Confucianism, Buddhist ceremony and worship, looking forward to next life of Buddhism, making pills of immortality and rising as an immortal on newly sprouted wings of Taoism, and so on, are all preserved by Poem Prefaces, a cultural morphology with free form and flexible structure.The fifth chapter studies Poem Prefaces of mourning and erotic subjects. Poem Prefaces is mainly narrative, but its lyric quality is quite prominent as well. This chapter delineates and investigates 24 mourning articles and 22 erotic articles of Poem Prefaces, in order to reveal the life-value pursuit of the poets in the Tang Dynasty: facing the dying down of this life, witnessing the great changes that time brought to theworld, long or short life and fortune or misfortune are very hard to predict, same thingsand different persons make one sentimental. Therefore, the mournful pathos and reluctant nostalgic scenes in Poem Prefaces, without exception, contain the strong life sentiment of the poets in the Tang Dynasty.The sixth chapter studies the connotation of musical dance in Poem Prefaces. The Tang Dynasty is the flourishing age of musical dance and there are plentiful musical dance contents in Poem Prefaces. For example, Poem Prefaces especially emphasize the relationship between musical dance and times of peace or turbulence, consciously complement some ancient musical songs, record the palace and folk musical dance skills and actors, preserve some vivid alien musical dance materials, and so on. This not only reflects the close blending of different cultural morphology, but also embodies the prosperity of musical dance in the Tang Dynasty.The seventh chapter spreads out directing at the connotation of literary comments in Poem Prefaces. Poems in the Tang Dynasty are prosperious, but the poetic comments are relatively weak. The literary thoughts of the scholars in the Tang Dynasty mostly scatter in letters, preface and postscript. Similarly, Poem Prefaces also take the responsibility of expounding the scholars' literary thoughts. Furthermore, during the Tang Dynasty, these literary thouhts also present the consistent pattern, whose core is the poetic thoughts of the Confucianists, from the Early Tang Dynasty to the Late Tang Dynasty.Comprehensive study contains the eighth, the ninth and the tenth chapter. They study the stytle, the literary characteristics, literary documentary value of Poem Prefaces.The eighth chapter means to reveal the relationship between Poem Prefaces and poem texts rationally. The relationship is absolute dependence and relative independence, dependence is its essential property and independence is its individual embodiment, the two aspects are dialectical unity; meanwhine, in the course of literary evolution, Poem Prefaces also show the combination of absolute evolution and relative stability. Without evolution development will be impossible and without stability characteristics will be difficult to form, the two aspects are interdependent.The nineth chapter spreads out from the literary characteristics of Poem Prefaces. First, the openness of the constitution of contents, the freedom of the structure of articles and the sincerity of the emotional manifestation are their literary manifestations. Secondly, the classic elegance and emotional esteem of the Early TangDynasty, the magnificence and grandness of the Prosperous Tang Dynasty, the dignity and deepness of the Mid-Tang Dynasty, the triviality and calmness of the Late Tang Dynasty constitute the aesthetic intension with characteristics of the age of Poem Prefaces in the Tang Dynasty. These literary characteristics are not only connected with the poets, but also the embodiment of the literary individuality of Poem Prefaces.The tenth chapter reveals the documentary value of Poem Prefaces. Poem Preface is finished by the poet personally and its primary content is recording individual experiences and knowledge, hardly involving unfounded and fabricate constitutes, so its truthfulness is undoubted. The documents contained in Poem Prefaces mainly involve literature and history. Therefore, Poem Prefaces are not only the reliable materials of studying the poets' life and writing, they also have cultrual relevance of mutual complement and demonstration with social historical study.