A Study Of Xiao Gang's Thing-chanting Poetry

Emperor Jianwen, Xiaogang has always been denounced for his palace-poem. As for his poetry, many researchers always took a political standpoint and criticized his poem for its voluptuous, decadent and pimping, but other content of his poem has seldom been discussed. Wang Fuzhi said that thing-chanting poetry boomed ever since Qi and Liang Dynasty. As a leader of Liang dynasty in literary world, his poetry must be a symbol of his age. There is no systematically research on his thing-chanting poetry up to now; he was just mentioned for several of his poem in the booming of thing-chanting poetry. This paper, based on Lu Qinli's 'poetry before Qin, Han, Wei, Jin, and Nanbei Dynasty' and 'new chanting of Yutai', discussed his thing-chanting poetry roundly and deeply, gave an objective evaluation for its art value. We hope to give him a positive evaluation in the history of thing-chanting poetry.This paper is composed of four parts. In the first part, we gave a definition of thing-chanting poetry, started with chanting and thing, integrated his attitude and taste psychology, gave a definition of thing-chanting poetry in general. For the second part, we discussed the transformation of thing-chanting poetry before Nan Dynasty, For the third part, we classified his poetry and found its characteristics, and we tried to find its development in thing-chanting poetry. For the last part, we compared his poetry with that of Song and Qi Dynasty with four parts: quantity, extent, style, and format.Of course there are drawbacks in his thing-chanting poetry. The expression of his feeling is mainly formulized with personification and empathy at the end of the poem and it is lack of novelty. Some of his thing-chanting poetry is combined with eroticism that can not be integrated with feeling. So we should treat it with an objective attitude, not all alike.