A Comparative Study On Wordsworth's And Tao Yuanming's Pastoral Poetry

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Tao Yuanming (365-427) are the mostoutstanding pastoral poets in English and Chinese literary histories. Wordsworthmight well be accounted as the greatest poet after Chaucer and Shakespeare in thehistory of English literature. "A poet of nature", he eulogizes the greatness of natureand glorifies the low and rustic life. He advocates that the human beings should returnto nature to restore the simplicity of mind and to rescue man's corrupted soul. TaoYuanming, the founder of the Chinese pastoral school, is considered the greatestpastoral poet in the history of Chinese literature. He possesses the innate dispositionto pursue the natural course of life. Tired of the officialdom of the Eastern Jin Dynasty,Tao Yuanming withdraws from the sound and fury of the public life and returns to thetranquil country life. By laboring, he deepens his understanding of life. Persistent inhis pursuit of spiritual freedom and the peace of mind, he enjoys living in seclusionand writing pastoral poems to sing the beauty of the rural life. Far apart in time andspace, William Wordsworth and Tao Yuanming have built up a bridge that links theWest and the East.The thesis explores the similarities and differences in Wordsworth's and TaoYuanming's pastoral poetry in several aspects. This comparative study intends notonly to track the ideological development of the two poets and to achieve a betterunderstanding of their poems, but more importantly, to probe into what lies behind thesimilarities and differences. Hopefully, the research may contribute to a moreprofound literary and cultural communication between the East and the West.This thesis consists of five parts:Introduction part aims to give a brief survey of the two pastoral poets and a shortreview of the research on the two poets and their pastoral poems. The goal andperspectives of the thesis are indicated therein.Chapter One is divided into two sections. The first section makes a briefintroduction of pastoral poetry and traces its origin and development in both Westernand Eastern literature. The Western pastoral tradition can be traced back to ancientGreece and Rome with the shepherd's life as the theme. The Chinese pastoral poetrycan retrospect to the several poems in Shi Jing (The Book of Songs). The secondsection summarizes the contributions of Wordsworth and Tao Yuanming to thedevelopment of the Western and the Eastern pastoral genre.Chapter Two is subdivided into three sections. The first section explores the twopoets' similar way to return to rural life. Despairing of the social realities Wordsworthand Tao Yuanming both return to the rural life to seek for a comfort from nature. Inthe second section a comparative study is made to find out the common themes intheir poems that find expression in the beauty of nature, the tranquility of country lifeand the poets' sympathy for the poor rural people. The last section analyzes thesimilarity in the two poets' poetic language. They both employ a simple and commonlanguage in their pastoral poems.Chapter Three is also made up of three sections. Section one discusses thedifferent poetic realms which Wordsworth and Tao Yuanming construct in theirpastoral poems. The different realms derive from different cultural traditions in theWest and the East. Wordsworth stresses on his own meditation on nature, whichembodies the Western cultural tradition of "man and nature belonging to oppositesystems", while Tao Yuanming emphasizes his merging into nature, which representsthe Eastern cultural tradition that "man is an integral part of nature". Section twoexplores the two poets' different viewpoints on nature. Wordsworth considers"childhood" as the medium for man to return to nature;Tao Yuanming deepens hisunderstanding of nature from farming in the embrace of nature. Section threecompares the goals the two poets intend to achieve by going back to nature. InWordsworth's pastoral poems, he glorifies the divinity of nature and advocates thathuman beings should return to nature to recover their distorted hearts, while, for TaoYuanming, returning to nature is a means to pursue his individual spiritual freedomand to perfect his personality.The thesis comes to the conclusion by highlighting the findings in the previouschapters. The theme of "back to nature" should be developed by the contemporarypoets, and the common language should also be advocated in the poetic writing. Inspite of the cultural and historical differences between England and China, bothWordsworth and Tao Yuanming choose the same way of life as a protest against theharsh realities and a comfort for their disturbed souls. They both put greatest emphasison nature and get from it strength and enlightenment that is no less significant andinspiring to the people today.