The Study Of The Taoist Nuns' Poems In Tang Dynasty

As the most famous poetesses in the late Tang Dynasty, Xue Tao, Yu Xuanji, and Li Ye all had a frustrated life and enjoyed the same identity—.Taoist. Although they have been dead for several thousand years, their beautiful lines were handed down to the modern times, which provides an evidence for the study of their poetry. Since the three poetesses have so much in common, we can study them three together on the same cultural background and concentrate our efforts on the life of these Taoist Nuns, the relationship between their poem writing and social culture, and their special mind in writing. Thus the creation process of these poetesses and the idea of this special social group on the special social background are presented clearly before us .The first chapter of my thesis deals with the historical and cultural background on which the phenomenon of the Taoist Nuns appeared, including the openness of the society and rising of female social position, the prosperity of Taoism, the influence of life experience of the Taoist Nuns and social communication on the their personality and their poem writing.The second chapter concentrates on the ideology of the Taoist Nuns. As Tang Dynasty is a period during which Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism merged together, the Taoist Nuns could accept the ideas from these three Schools religion and take from them whatever they needed and applied them to their poem writing, which conveyed the freedom and openness of their mind.The third chapter discusses the subject matter of the poems written by these Taoist Nuns, including love, friendship, expressing anger to the society, expressing feeling through describing a scene, expressing their personal ambition, and describing natural scenery.The fourth chapter is to analyze the Taoist Nuns' poem style, which is one that combines the female characteristics of expressing deep and simpleminded emotion feeling in plain words, and the "unfemle" characteristics.Due to the research on the poems written by the Taoist Nuns of Tang Dynasty has not been completed so far, and my research on this topic is limited, there must be some room for improvement of the view points in my thesis.