Chinese Ancient Poetics And Linguistics

With its particular charming characters, the ancient poetries have attracted the literature researchers' attention. Usually, the approach to the study on the ancient poetries includes recording a poet's life, his story and background of his poetries, and appreciating poetries themselves. Moreover, the study on the rules of poetries is another approach to the research of poetry producing theory. The rules of poetries can be defined as a combined system of poetry producing skills and measures such as the usage of language, the skill of form change and the realization of poetry, which contains poetry style, poetry model and all rules of poetry saying. For its suborganic character as a tool, the rules of poetry have been neglected by the researchers. On the contrary, it has a close relationship with the superorganic sensing aspect just because it is the basal operating aspect of the Chinese ancient poetics. Only after discovering its connotation and mechanism, and deoxidizing its truth, can we apply it into the modern poetics and make it our nation's poetic language. With the employment of the modern language elucidatory model in explaining the poetics, this thesis is proposed to transform Chinese poetics into a part of world fortune.This thesis is made up of five chapters: law of characters, Syntax, art of composition, metrics and pandect, of which the first four chapters are parallel oneswhere their subsections are arranged in terms of four constituents——character,sentence, text and metrics——in the ancient poetry. And the pandect is a chapter ofsummary and sublimation based on the former chapters. In the first chapter, the law of characters was discussed. The law of characters is mainly concerned with the usage of characters and its establishment. As the most essential and significant component of the operating rules in poetics, it constitutes the precondition of syntax, text and metrics. Firstly, it is unscrambled that the final target of characters' using is 'diversification'. Secondly, the approaches and measures of characters in performing its poetic functions were discussed. That is to say, we discussed two problems: 'character's selection' and 'soul of poetry'. 'Character's selection' is considered as a generating process of poetic expressions. Its functionalprinciples were analyzed under the guide of Saussure's linguistic theory——'syntagmatic and paradigmatic' theory. With the employment of the semantic axis and semantic constituents analysis, two approaches of the structural semantics theory, the procedures of selecting character were discussed further and the criteria of 'soul of poetry' was determined as well. It is concluded that 'characters' selection' is beyond the restriction of the rules in common languages and presents particular poeticfeatures——more 'spiritual' and 'bouncing'. In other words, 'characters' selection',through establishing the 'flesh and body' relationship between characters, constitutes a more complicated text and presents the poetic features. Last but not the least, the functions of empty words in presenting poetic features was also discussed in this chapter.In the second chapter, we began with the analysis of the differences between the sentences in ancient poesy and those in common expressions, and put our focus on the discussion of word order, ellipsis and pausing rhythm. 'Pausing rhythm' as the principal rule and the sole criteria to determine an ancient poetic sentence, represents the combining requirements of semantic expression and physiological phonation which together determine the length of a sentence and restrict the syllable structure and rhythm within a poetic sentence. 'Order change', with the help of split, reversal and misarranging, changes the normal word order deliberately to improve the affective expression of a sentence and show its poetic feature. 'Ellipsis', as another approach to create a pure poetry, can weaken the semantic function of a sentence and increase the denseness of image. In a word, syntax including the three approaches discussed above is an important factor in the realization of poetic feature, which is proposed to improve the affective function of the poetic sentences and to differentiate the ancient poesy from essay.The third chapter discussed the biggest grammatical component——'text'. Inthis chapter, the basic textual structure of the ancient Chinese poesy, 'commencement(起), expanding (承) , transition (转) and summing-up (合) ' has been analyzed and then some principles and approaches in text structure were drawn out. It is found that 'central idea(意脉)' is the final target of all principles and approaches and it results from the orderly arrangement and juncture of materials. Theme, as the command of a text, has variability in the ancient poetries such as the differentiation between main theme and assistant theme, explicit theme and implicit theme. The art of composition in ancient poetries shapes the text compactly, euphemistically and deeply.In the fourth chapter, we discussed the contribution of metrics to the poetic features based on the analysis of the rules which show the effects of metrics on intonation, SHENGMU and YUNMU. Rules of intonation appear the dominant ones which achieve the sound effect through the control of PINGZE and four tones (四项基本原则声) .Rhyming implements a treated text through the YUNMU which functions on the YUNJIAO. Rhythm change improves the expressive effects of poetries together with the bearing of it. SHUANGSHENG and DIEYUN, through the repeat of the same sound, are characterized with the feature of sound conglomeration and show the charm of sound.The last chapter, the pandect, is a sublimation as well as a summary of all the operating rules discussed above. Based on the observation of the relationship between the operating level and superorganic level in terms of 'QI', 'YUN' and 'QING', this thesis is proposed to describe the basic structure of the poetries' operating theory. The innovation in this thesis lies in the first attempt to study the ancient poetry'sproducing theory——the rules of poetry——synchronically with the employmentof linguistic theory and measures, and the first attempt to elucidate the Chinese ancient poetics from the cross-discipline and parallel aspect, discovering the connotation, operational principles and functions of the operating laws, aiming at the establishment of metalanguage system of the Chinese ancient poetics and the build-up of the relation between the operating level and the sensing level.The academic value of this thesis is to provide the producing of the ancient poetry with some possibilities and to testify the origin of the Chinese ancient poetics from the aspect of demonstration. The establishment of the metalanguage system of the Chinese ancient poetry not only provides the deoxidization of the true history of the Chinese ancient poetics but also prove that the Chinese ancient poetics has its particular charm and value. Owing to the build-up of the relation between the operating level and sensing level, Chinese ancient poetics gets rid of its mysterious character based on individual experience and becomes a universal poetic theory which can be widely accepted by the world. Actually, this thesis demonstrates the feasibility of the equal conversation and communication between Chinese poetics and the West poetics.