An Empirical Study Of Bai Juyi's Life And His Writings

This dissertation is intended to study Bai Juyi, a renowned poet in Tang Dynasty by way of empirical research to probe into Bai Juyi's life and his writings. Based on a synthetic exploration of some overseas documents, the unearthed documents and the classic documents, it tries to make a new development for Bai Juyi studies.The dissertation consists of six chapters, about three hundred thousand words, mainly including four aspects as follows.In the first place, it includes the study of Bai Juyi's family and his social communications. Based on the recently unearthed documents, the author of the dissertation tries to explore some problems of Bai Juyi's family to clarify his ancestor and descendants which are controversial in academic circle for a long time. Bai Juyi's marriage is also discussed here. Some features of Bai clan's marriage are displayed by researching the marriage relationship among the clans of Bai, Yang, Huangpu and Zhang. In order to explore his social communications, the author inclines to figure down Bai's relationship with Niu and Li who are involved in clans struggle and reevaluates the attribute of the struggle and its performance.In the second place, it includes the study of some editions of Bai Juyi's works. This part mostly uses the overseas documents, especially some scarce documents kept in Japan. The development of these collected edition, separate edition and anthologies is surveyed in order to expand his edition study. Additionally, this part inspects rubbing edition and calligraphic edition to analyze some special ways of his works handing down and settle out some correlative questions.In the third place, it includes the empirical research into Bai Juyi's poetry. It focuses on two aspects. Firstly, it focuses on the researches of Chang Hen Ge and Pi Pa Xing. The Preface to Chang Hen Ge kept in Japan is the original preface written by Bai Juyi. Therefore, it can be confirmed that the relationship between Chang Hen Ge and Chang Hen Ge Zhuan is not integrative. As to the theme of Chang Hen Ge, there're widely divided opinions, the new illumination can be gained and the poetry's love theme can also be confirmed by textual research. Pi Pa Xing has a confidential relationship with the system of Jiao Fang (the imperial musical office) in Tang Dynasty. By researching historical materials and exploring internal meaning, it can be proved that the first category of Jiao Fang in Tang Dynasty is Hu category; Jiao Fang consists of four categories, including Hu, Qiu Ci, Gu Jia and Qing Yue; the age limit of entrance into Jiao Fang is thirteen years old in Tang Dynasty; since the mid-Tang Dynasty, Jiao Fang tends to be folk trend. Secondly, this part discusses the categorization of Bai Juyi's poetry. In the Tenth Year of Yuanhe Years (815 AD) when Bai Juyi collected his works, he categorized them into four types:allegorical poetry, leisure poetry, sentimental poetry and unregulated verses. This part attempts to restore these works to the original state. The quartering of the poetry plays an important role in the distinction of regulated verse; it's also helpful to distinguish between emotions and wills. However, there is an apparent deficiency with endless and disorderly characteristics in some poetry.Last but not least, it includes the study of the acceptance of Bai Juyi' poetry in Japan. This part takes advantage of interrelated documents and research findings in Japan. It illustrates the feature of his works' acceptance in different periods in Japan:in the Heian Era, the acceptance was deep and broad with a whole spreading tendency; in the Azuchi-Momoyama Era, Chinese literature in Japan was apt to accommodate leisure poetry and leisure spirit; in the Edo Era, owing to literature thoughts of Ming Dynasty, the acceptation mainly tended to become the remark of "vulgar Bai", but still there were some people who admired Bai Juyi's poetry although they were outside the mainstream.Besides, consciousness of a Medium for Poetry, complex of beautiful lines and anthology accommodation are common feature and main style at different stage of the acceptance of Bai Juyi's poetry in Japan.