A Study On Xiantongshizhe And Their Poems

Xiantongshizhe, famous for their poems, are a grupe of poets in the late Tang Dynasty. They are Zhang Qiao, Xu Tang, Yu Tanzhi, Ju Yan, Ren Tao, Wu Han, AZhang Pin, Zhou Yao, Zheng Gu, Li Xiyuan, Wen Xian and Li Changfu. They live in the eighty to ninety years from emperor of Mu of the Tang Dynasty(821-824) to several years after the end of the Tang Dynasty. They are poor and have no political backgrounds, so they hope to improve their conditions only through examination for Jinshi title. Their poems existed today can be devided into four sorts: poems for presenting or seeing off; poems for emotion expressing; poems for scenery or thing and poems for society describing. They are not good at society describing but they have some good poems for scenery or thing and several of them are famous for this kind of poems. The arts of their poems are as following: poems of set rules for tonal patterns and rhyme and five characters each line as the majority; a weak style; simple language. Although they have not much achievement their poems have distinctive characteristics. Their poems have the sentimental tone like Li Shangyin's but have no frivolity of his follower Han Wo's, have the simple language like Yuan Bai's but have no cynicism of their followers Pi Lu's. Relatively, the style of their poems is more like Jia Dao and Yao He's, and then, in literary history they become a bridge between Jia Dao, Yao He and poets of late Tang Dynasty style in the early Song Dynasty.