Shaping Emotions: Study On The Development Of New Poetry In Rhythm And Imagery (1917-1937)

Viewing from literature and linguistics the dissertation aims to reach a comprehensive understanding of the development of New Poetry (1917---1937) in its language forms. Relating with each other, rhythm and imagery are thought two vital factors of poetry. Their characters constitute the most essential art features of poetry, while the relevant language techniques and forms generated accordingly make the style of poetry unique and attractive. The collapse of traditions of classic poetry and the great pressure of western culture together gave birth to the modern New Poetry. While criticizing and inheriting the traditions and influenced by modern western poetry, it explored for an appropriate form of poetry for the poetic emotions of modern poets and thus established its own systems of rhythm and imagery, dynamic and closely related with each other instead of static and isolated, and totally different from ancient Chinese poetry. The cross and respective efforts in the two aspects, rhythm and imagery, and the continuous exploration of many poets in shaping modern emotions between traditions and non-traditions finally led to the establishment of aesthetics of modern poetry. Besides the introduction and conclusion parts, the dissertation can be divided into four chapters. The attitudes of ancient Chinese poetry towards rhythm and imagery are reviewed in chapter one. It's stated that the history of ancient Chinese poetry is actually a process of pursuing and combining the beauty of poetic rhythm and imagery, which are not only interrelated through emotions and the accompanied inner rhythm but also restricted and enlightened when pursuing more freedom from the comparative unfreedom. The rest chapters focus on the study of the evolution of New Poetry (1917---1937) which experienced from essay-like forms to pure poetry. It's in that period New Poetry gradually established its own expression modes and art features. Concerning especially the language forms of poetry, it's a continuous, closely related and comparatively integrated process in these twenty years. Starting from the emergence of Hushi's theory"the great liberation of poetic style", New Poetry turned out to be essay-like and non-poetry due to the bias towards traditions of classic poetry as well as the lack of perspective of the poetic beauty of rhythm and imagery, yet all the problems posed during this period has indicated the possible ways and approaches of its future development. In mid 1920s, the typical progress of New Poetry was marked by the development of the Crescent Moon School and the Symbolist School. With the impacts of traditions and non-traditions, the two schools explored in the aspects of metrics and imagery, and the experiences they got provided precious references for the new comers. Though limited in their respective efforts, they actually led to the stylistic maturation of New Poetry. The Modern Poetry School, the largest poetry school in the 1930s, integrated all the former experiences of New Poetry in its development of language forms. It furthered the study of traditions of classic poetry and west poetry tides, reached more conscious and keen understanding towards poetic rhythm and imagery, integrated them in the practice of works creation, and thus primarily established the principle of language forms for modern Chinese poetry. That is, through exploring the beauty of poetic imagery with the focus of inner rhythm, which also can be called emotional rhythm, to endow poetry with various language techniques and create the aesthetics of modern poetry by using external rhythm factors of poetry and all the relations between rhythm and imagery.