A Study Of The Characteristic Of Du Fu’s Song-form Poetry

Du Fu, one of the most greatest Poets in ancient China, has created about140Song-form poetry in his life. This thesis wants to elaborate and analyze those works chronologically, and present the history of the creation of his Song-form poetry systematically. And it is divided into five topics:lyric, narrative, aesthetic style, system and music. It studies Du Fu’s Song-form poetry from these five different aspects, and try to draw a conclusion that the spiritual kernel of Du Fu’s poetry art is to restore ancient ways for the new ones. At that time of the Tang Dynasty, the art of Song-form poetry was highly developed and inclining to be sophisticated day by day. Du Fu wanted to return to the tradition of the earlier Song-form poetry consciously. He inherited the spirit of Yuefu poetry form lyric, narrative, aesthetic style, system and music, and opened up the artistic expression of the Song-form poetry. In the end, he made the artistic achievements of Song-form poetry reach the peak of perfection.About the lyrics of the poetry, Du Fu did lots of conscious learning from of Yuefu Poetry. He aided song’s lyric techniques into poetry. By writing poetry as the song, he expressed strong consciousness of being a singer, thus strengthened the musical and lyrical quality of poetry. Finally he solved the contradiction:while the art of literati poetry was more and more developed, the lyrics of the poetry were getting weaker.Concern to the narrative art field, Du Fu combined two different narrative tradition which was represented by "the book of songs" and the Yuefu poetry. On the one hand, he inherited the essence of "the book of songs" traditional which was epitomized by choosing historic events to show a kind of epic atmosphere and giving some historical criticism. On the other hand, he revived to the neglected narrative tradition of Yuefu poetry which is epitomized by emphasizing poetry’s fiction, plot and legendary. It manifested poetry’s entertainment features. Eventually Du fu created a group of masterpieces which were perfectly combined the three elements of narrative art:describing characters, narrating stories and giving ethical value. And his poetry had a deep influence on the prosperity of the narrative poetry in mid-Tang Dynasty.About the aesthetic style, Du Fu had already thoroughly studied and skillfully mastered the literary skill of Song-form poetry in early Tang, which was represented by the style of gorgeous and grace. On the one hand, Du fu added a large number of forthright sentences into poetry with innovative attitude, which broke the style of gorgeous and grace. On the other hand, he restored ancient ways on a higher plane. He used a lot of tragic images to break the grace tone, so his Song-form poetry seemed profound and magnificent. When he wrote a great tragedy, he used the gorgeous and grace words to describe it, so it did not look shabby or rough. He did not only revive the poetry’s classical style which was represented by the style of gorgeous and grace, but also gave the tragedy some multilevel cultural connotation. His poetry reflected the past and present, the honor and disgrace, the prosperity and decline at the same time. It shows the tension of tragedy and gorgeous tone.About the system, Du Fu’s song-form poetry "created new title", in order to get rid of the limitations of the simulation to Yuefu poetry, which was very popular in Qi and Liang dynasty.Du Fu opened up the field of the song-form poetry,and directly inspired the "new the Yuefu movement" in the mid-Tang Dynasty. Contemporaneous with Du Fu, the old title Yuefu poetry was the mainstream. Although there was a large number of old title Yuefu poetry in Tang dynasty, Du Fu was rarely writing them. The reason was not only to avoid the achievement of Li Bai’s old title Yuefu poetry or just create something new. More importantly, Du fu revived to the Yuefu traditional on a higher plane. The fact is that he restored ancient ways for the new ones. He wanted to liberate the poetic art of lyric art and narrative, in case to get the highest degree of freedom.Concern to the field of Music, Du Fu’s seven-syllable poetry proved the rhythm of the previous generation and completed the transformation of seven-syllable poetry from "Man Sheng Cu Jie" to "Cheng Yu Dun Cuo". He also symbolized the achievement of seven-syllable poetry’s music rhythm form two aspects. This is Du Fu’s great contribution to the seven-syllable poetry.