Research Of Special Subjects On Study Of Poetry In Song Dynasty

Since Han dynasty till middle Tang dynasty, annotations about The Book Of Poetry had been basically dominated by the Sinological classics established by The Preface to Mao Poetry, Mao Zhuan, Zheng Jian and Kong Shu. After the year of Qing Li during the rein of Ren Zong of the Northern Song dynasty, a vogue of doubt and confusion on classics and poetry in the research of Poetry emerged under the influence of the fashion of contemplation and argument in the field of poetry since from mid-Tang dynasty. Scholars developed new ideas in explanations of Poetry. They broke off the fetter of traditional Sinological classics, and meanwhile held some doubt, criticism and creation on them. Gradually came out the tradition of Song dynasty study on Poetry. Compared with Sinological focus on the words in Poetry, study in Song dynasty on Poetry paid more attention to the explanations of meanings and arguments.Generally speaking, if we can say Confucius teaching on Poetry was "Poetry can excite and move the public, reveal the social and political reality, facilitate communications among people, and show dissatisfactions about the present ruling strata", "the special ability for diplomats"; in War Period the teaching on Poetry was "tenderness and integration" and "quotations out of context", the Sinological teaching on poetry would be exercising politics according to Poetry and expostulations based on "the Three Hundred poems". As for people of Song dynasty, Poetry got rid of these formalized rules. Moreover, they showed their emotions through Poetry, and argued in way of Poetry. Is Poetry just something to "show emotions" or "Bi and Xing"? Is value on Poetry just the dogma of "expressing emotions and abandoning the etiquettes"? Poetry was actually a giant work and magic trump that could communicate the heaven and the earth, meanings and arguments, people and people, the heaven and humans. According to people of Song dynasty, the value of Poetry lay in its possibility to brighten people's hearts and spirits, to access understanding. If it could access understanding, whatever rules of Han and Tang could be abandoned; if it counteracted Taoism, doubt should be cast even on the saint classics.In accordance with this intention and on basis of inheriting, suspecting, criticizing and recreating Sinological Poetry, scholars of Song talking about Poetry with poetry, discussed it with theories, proved it through history, explaining it with The Preface. Through these pluralistic methods, they reanalyzed and rediscussed some academic subjects in the research history on Poetry, such as Preface to Poetry, Deletion of poems, Two Nan, Two Ya, Norm and Variation, Six Yi, Nasty Poems, Ins and Outs. They might completely inherit the old theory, edit and recreat while inherit, or establish new thought. In this way, the colorful special study on Poetry of Song dynasty was formed.However, reflecting upon the researches on Poetry of Song dynasty over a century, we can see a large part of subjects related with Poetry was repeatedly studied, most thesis focused on discussions about The Preface and Nasty Poems, etc. Few thesis were about other traditional questions and those of new ideas. This, on a large degree, is bad for the further development of research on Poetry of Song. This thesis attempts to concretely describe the characteristics, achievements and influence of study on Poetry of Song, based on 67 presently saved and anthologized works on Poetry, as well as hundreds of single arguments and prefaces collected in the anthologies of Song scholars. Taking each subject as the cut-in point, historical materials as the foundation, I'll bring out arguments with histories, integrate history with arguments, put every subjects about Poetry of Song dynasty into the whole academic history of Poetry, and reflect the whole with certain point, the bigger with the smaller. I hope by careful learning from the research achievement of the precedent, there will be some breakthrough in research methods, adoption of materials, as well as the depth and width of research.Besides the prologue and conclusion, the body of this thesis can be divided into nine chapters. The basic structure is set as follow:Chapter One: Doubts and Confusions about Classics& Study on Poetry of Song dynasty. In this chapter, first I inspect the academic background of the development of study on Poetry in Song dynasty; then concretely explain the general development situation under this background and the annotation methods. It was not occasional for the totally different situations between the study on Poetry in Song dynasty and that of Han and Tang. It was a reflection of the social trend of doubts about the old poetry. In Song dynasty, under the influence of political and educational reform and the renaissance of Confucianism, a thought trend of "classics returned to ancient" appeared in the research field of Poetry. Scholars didn't focus on the words any longer. Instead, they paid more attention to meanings and arguments. Some scholars' views about Poetry were more unique from those of the precedent. They took Poetry as works to nurture temperature, not like The Preface's comment that it was just some kind of flowery irony; the function of teachings of Poetry lay in its reflection of public abreast, civilization of customs and nourishing of temperature. Therefore, scholars of Song dynasty worked out many new ideas on Poetry so as to establish their own Poetry study system. Thus I think it extremely important to discuss the relations between the doubting and arguing trend in the study field of Poetry and that of Song dynasty. It was because of this study trend that scholars of Song brought out suspicion about the tradition methods of treating Poetry and the annotations of Poetry in Han and Tang, so they established new theories and promoted the development of study on Poetry in Song. Therefore, the inspections about the academic background of this study, the summary of documents and the annotation methods are intended to prepare rather complete materials and theoretical sources for the next eight chapters.Chapter Two to Nine are discussions about the special subjects on study of Poetry in Song dynasty. They are "The Preface", "Deletion of poems", "Two Nan", "Two Ya", "Norm and Variations", "Six Yi", "Nasty poems", "Ins and outs". Actually, these contain the two aspects discussed by Song scholars in the study history of Poetry. One is traditional questions, that is the questions debated by scholars of Han and Tang after the formation of Poetry, like The Preface, deletion of poems, two Nan, two Ya, Norm and Variation and six Yi, etc. As for these traditional questions, Song scholars might inherit the old theories, edit them, or bring out new ones. All of these promoted new developments of the traditional questions in Song dynasty. Newly appeared questions were comparative to the traditional ones. They might not be established by Song people, but they truly became the academic subjects in the study history on Poetry through the specific arguments carried out by Song people, such as nasty poems, ins and outs. Explorations about these newly appeared questions formed the characteristic research on Poetry of Song.Around these special academic subjects in the study history on Poetry, Song scholars proposed more or less different and new views from the past. For example, as for The Preface to Poetry, on basis of suspicious and dialectic spirits, Song people thought there were many places in The Preface that were not coincident with the leitmotiv of poems, thus they doubted that it was not the work of saints or their disciples. Therefore, they started from analyzing the author of The Preface, and called for abandoning The Preface but talking about The Poetry. This was an outstanding behavior of doubts about classics in Song's study on The Poetry, as well as a prominent contribution to the research on Poetry of Song people.As for the question of deleting poems, after Kong Yingda initially cast doubt on Sima Qian's records from the aspect of "over 3000 poems of the ancient were not trustful", Song scholars that denied Confucian deletion of poems firstly clearly and concretely denounced the theory of Confucian deletion of poems with reasons like "over 3000 poems of the ancient" were not trustful, no record about Confucian deletion of poems in Analects of Confucius, Ji Zha of Wu visit music of Zhou to Lu, it's order of arrangement was similar with the present version of Poetry, and Confucius couldn't delete poems with his individual power. Till then, question of Confucius's deletion of poems advanced into a complete and essential debate period and formed a climax in history. What's more, all of the above refute had been adopted by the latter scholars and took them as the main arguments to denounce Confucius's deletion of poems. By this we can see the initial achievement of Song people.As for question of norm and variations, after Zheng Xuan and Kong Yingda developed The Preface to Mao's Poetry and established their own annotation system of Poetry, among scholars of Han and Tang dynasties, except Cheng Boyu who held some new theories, few doubted and many followed. However, Song scholars like Zheng Qiao, Ye Shi, Zhang Ruyu created the theory of Feng, Ya without norm and variations, thus led to arguments about the theory of Feng, Ya with or without norm and variation.About question of six Yi, Song people formed some new and coherent views through constant analysis and discussions on many questions existing in this theory. For example, they used three ti and three yong to explain the connotation of six Yi, used music to differentiate Feng, Ya and Song, and distinguished Bi and Xing in respect of literature. This knowledge broke through the traditional concepts of study on Poetry in Han and Tang, and also greatly influenced that of Song dynasty.Moreover, Song people explained two Nan of Zhou and Zhao with official titles, Nan of two Nan by south music, south. They advocated that two Nan should be independent on Feng, Ya and Song, distinguish major and minor Ya by the types of Ci, take the wedding poems in fifteen kingdom Feng of Poetry as the nasty poems and that Poetry had ins and outs. All of these were original creations of Song people.In Song people's discussions around these special subjects, except the above said newly created viewpoints, there also were some edits and inheritance of views of Han and Tang on Poetry. For example, they respected The Preface to Poetry, commented on Poetry with theory of beauty and irony; they agreed on Confucius's deletion of poems, admitted that norm and variations existed in Feng and Ya, explained two Nan of Zhou and Zhao with regions, Nan of two Nan by south music, south country, distinguished two Nan with the depth of saints, differentiated major and minor Ya, Feng, Ya and Song with politics. Generalizing these views, we can see there are too many inheritances but not enough breakthroughs. Some distorted the annotations in order to protect the old theories. This is the limitation of Song people's study on Poetry.Generally speaking, on these special academic subjects on study of Poetry, scholars of Song inherited some of the old theories of Han and Tang as well as brought out somewhat different new views from the past. Regardless the appropriateness of these viewpoints, the suspicious and dialectic spirit, the style of free discussion and the contemplative and creative minds are worth of the respect from later generations. But this also became the unique contribution to research on special subjects of Poetry by Song people, as well as supplied numerous references for the latter scholars studying Poetry. This, undoubtedly, is the most prominent contribution to the whole study history of Poetry by research on Poetry carried out in Song dynasty.