Hunan Poet Research Group Chatham Same Period

The turning point of the late Qing Dynasty was Xianfeng and Tongzhi period, whose symptom was social unrest, filled with variety of problems, such as domestic conflicting, foreign invading, peasant uprising, China’s door opening forced by artillery fire. Especially the peasant uprising of the Taiping and the Opium War exerted an enormous impact on our nation. Meanwhile this was also in the history of glommy politics, officials’ corruption, and ineffective fighting force. The Hunan army emerged with rapid expansion and fought on many fronts in the differtent conquests. Then there were splendid idioms about those talents in the Hunan army:where there is no Hunan province, there is no the Hunan army, great crises in the place of Chu call forth gifted leaders, distinguished talents mainly exist in Hunan, and so on.The army generals in Hunan, like Zeng Guofan, Zuo Zongtang, Peng Yulin, Hu Linwing, Jiang Zhongyuan, Luo Zenan, Liu Rong, Zeng Guoquan, Li Yuandu, Li Xuyi, Wang Zhen etc, displined their army with Confusion and adopted idealist philosophy of Confusionism. Their solid relationship was based on school, marriage. They composed poetry in their spare time, writed letters back and forth to keep up correspondence with each other. The regular communications made them have the similar literature sence:emphasizing poem education, applying writing to the truth, advocating the Song poetry school, stressing poetic romance. They read poetry in social gatherings, wedding and funeral, excursion and visiting. Taking all these factors into consideration, we naturally come to the conclusion that they are a group of poets.My statements are listed as follows.The first chapter starts with the environment and background of those poets in the Hunan army during the Xianfeng and Tongzhi period:mainly stating the geographical environment of Hunan, a long history of Hunan splendid culture, historical background and social unrest. In addition, the entire society’s academic spirit and poetic tendency are illustrated. Taking all these factors into consideration, we naturally come to deep reasons why this group of poets emerged at that time.There is no doubt that enough concern must be paid to the problem of the association, which reveals a relatively fixed and frequent link between those poets in the Hunan army. That good case in point is the association between Zeng Guofan and Guo Songtao, Liu Rong, Zuo Zongtang.The following chapters respectively analyze some figures, such as from the core leaders-Zeng Guofan, Guo Songtao, Liu Rong, to several important ones-Luo Zenan, Peng Yulin, combining their family background and literary thought with their poetry ideological content and artistic characteristics, giving the appropriate evaluation at the same time.For the statements mentioned above, I firmly believe that poets, like Zeng Guofan, Guo Songtao, Liu Rong, Luo Zenan, Peng Yulin, Zuo Zongtang, aligned with each other in politics and in military, sharing weal and woe. And they formed a poetry group with the same sence of literary composition. Because of their high status and mass responses, they played a significant role in pushing poetry of the late Qing forwards, especially in sending a series of impulses to Song poetry. This paper benefits insufficient recognition of those poets in the Hunan army, the Hunan army, Hunan literature, even of Chinese modern literature.