The Research On Qian Zai's Poetry

This paper, revolving around the poetic creation of Qian Zai, develops in the following eight chapters.The first chapter mainly explores the social background of Qian Zai, introducing the political, economic and cultural profiles during the heydays of the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty as well as the overall poetic features of those days. The key point is to probe into the reasons why textual research was so popular in the Qianlong period and how the severe political pressure influenced the personality and psychology of the people, so as to better understand the living conditions of the intellectual group and pave the way for the exploration of Qian Zai's cultural mentality and poetry creation. Besides, this chapter briefly introduces the poetic theories and artistic styles of the representatives from different poetic groups of the Qianlong period, with the intention to illustrate the relationship between Qian Zai and the above poetic groups.The second chapter, based on Qian Zai's literary works and other relevant documents, sums up the poetic creation of his whole life, which is generally divided into three periods, that is, schooling for office, holding office, and retiring from office. The exploration of Qian Zai's life contributes to the better understanding his poetry. Meanwhile, this chapter, in terns of family tradition and social interaction, deals with Qian Zai's early learning of poetry which lays much influence on his particular poetic creation.The third chapter, based on the scattered poetic theory contained in comments on poetry and Qian Zai's instructions to his children on poetic creation, and especially referring to his remarks on Weng Fanggang's poetry and other materials, summarizes and evaluates Qian Zai's poetic ideal and aesthetic pursuit in combination with his poetic practice. Besides, in terms of genres, Qian Zai's poems can be roughly divided in to five types, that is, pastoral poetry, poetry of Buddhist interests, memorial poetry, homesickness poetry and history poetry. These five types of poetry are respectively analyzed in detail, with the focus on the unique characteristics of his poetry and the inheriting and developing of the poems of previous generations. This chapter also deals with the reason why his poetry is hard to understand and summarizes the stylistic features of his poetry in terms of dictation and rhetoric.In the four to seven chapters, by putting Qian Zai'poems under the great background of poetic world in the Qianlong period, the paper analyzes the relationship between Qian Zai and other poetic groups, such as the scholar group, the Zhe group and the Xing Ling group. As to the Xiu Shui group, Qian Zai's leading role is mainly talked about. In order to clarify the poetic relationship between Qian Zai and above three groups, it is necessary to investigate the personality and the literary creation of the representatives of the three groups, i.e. Li E, Weng Fanggang and Yuan Mei, thus revealing the factors which lead to Qian Zai's mentality and artistic features.In the eighth chapter, by indicating the inherit relations between Qian Zai's poetry and other famous poets and by considering the whole developing venation of the poetry in Song dynasty, this paper analyzes the contribution made by Qian Zai in the development of poetry from the Song dynasty to Qing Dynasty. Qian Zai's poetry has a far-reaching influence on the later generation, and his influence can be seen from the poetry of some later poets, such as Li Jian, Cheng Enze, Jin Rongjing, Shen Zengzhi and Chen Yan. And then we can objectively make an accurate judgment on Qian Zai's position in the history of Chinese poetry.