Study Of Liu Zihui And His Poems

Being a philosopher in the early Southern Song Dynasty, Liu Zihui was not famous for his poems. However, his poems are plain and forthright, presenting profound patriotism. That is to say, Liu Zihui was also a quite influential poet who made great achievements in creating poetic works. To our disappointment, more famous and representative poets in the history of Southern Song poems shadowed his achievements, and scholars in succeeding generations have paid little attention to him. Therefore, there has been no specialized publication on systematic research on Liu Zihui and his poems.This thesis first investigates Liu Zihui's family background, life and experience .Under the influence of the tradition of the Liu family —admiring rites and knowledge, he turned philosopher and educator who had students all over the country. Another tradition that one should give one's life for one's country provoked him into strong patriotic emotions. They both accounted for subjects concerning national economy and livelihood of the people in his poems.Then the author makes a concrete text analysis of Liu's poems. To comprehensively understand depth of Liu's thoughts contained in his poems, all his 667 poems are classified into types of reflecting reality, describing scenery, pastorals, reflecting history, singing praise of friendship etc.Finally, the author explores artistic styles and causes of Liu's poems and argues that although he was closely related to JiangXi Poet School (Lu Benzhong,… etc), he still insisted on his own way of creating poetic works ; that although his overall character was plain and forthright.Recognizing Liu Zihui's significant position in literary history, the author deems that he was rather a influential characterful patriotic poet.