THE POETRY OF CHEN YUYI (1090 - 1139) (CHINA)

This dissertation studies the shi and ci poetry of Chen Yuyi (1090-1139). Its four chapters examine Chen's life and times, the worlds and language of his poetry, and his relationships with some earlier Chinese poets.; Historical facts about Chen Yuyi are rather scarce. Recent scholars have skillfully expanded upon Chen's meager entry in the Song History and the brief chronology compiled by Chen's commentator, Hu Zhi. Nevertheless, events during the first forty years of the twelfth century and their effects upon Chen are still poorly understood. By patching together an account from a variety of sources, I have presented in my first chapter a clearer picture of Chen's life.; Chapters two and three, the core of the dissertation, focus upon Chen's poetry itself. Since I have emulated the basically phenomenological approach of Professor James J. T. Liu, these chapters largely describe essential characteristics of Chen's oeuvre. Chapter two explores the poetic worlds created by Chen Yuyi. It plunges the reader into the multifarious interactions that inform Chen's poetic worlds and reveals the diversity of his work. Chapter three examines Chen's use of poetic language and evaluates how effectively Chen wielded diction, syntax, couplets, allusions, prosody, imagery, and closure. Here I stress recurrent patterns that help unify Chen's poetic voice.; The last chapter assesses Chen Yuyi's status relative to earlier poets. First I investigate the influence of Du Fu's diction, syntax, and unique poetic voice upon Chen. I choose Du Fu because his poetry is a kind of "Summa Poetica Sinologica." But questions of borrowing and influence alone cannot satisfactorily place Chen within the poetic tradition, so I turn to achronic relations, comparing batches of poems by Chen and earlier Tang and Song poets that share common topics and subgenres. By keeping differences in form and content to a minimum, I can show contrasts in personal style vividly. This last chapter enables the reader to understand what Chen did and did not share with his poetic predecessors and why I call Chen "a splendid poet of the second rank, a step below and a world away from the immortals of Chinese poetry."...