A Critical Study On The Poetry Of Zhang Yuan-gan

Drawing on Mencius's hermeneutic theory of "zhiren lunshi (to know a person through his time)," this dissertation studies the poetic creation of Zhang Yuan-gan by investigating the origin of Zhang's poetics and the way Zhang's personal experience and socio-historical milieu shapes Zhang's poetry. In the light of pertinent ancient and contemporary theories of artistic creation, interpretation, and criticism and of a careful literature review of Zhang's conceptions of poetic composition and related comments by critics after Zhang, the paper then tries to map out the formal aesthetic features of Zhang's poetry by combined analysis on its major thematic and formal properties. The paper finally contrasts Zhang's poetry and prose, compares Zhang's poetic achievement with that of his contemporaries, and arrives at a tentative appraisal of the aesthetic values of Zhang's poetry and Zhang's literary status in Chinese literary history. The paper argues that while Zhang's poetry is featured by richness in style and form, and by depth in content, its content is more steeped in articulation of patriotic passion and of sentiments "cynically at odds with social evils"; its style is characterized by a fervent forthrightness and grieved indignation. Zhang successfully brings his form in union with his content; his poetry has a well-knitted structure constructed around a natural, smooth, and harmonious tonal quality deftly aligned with the end of articulating the poet's emotions, building poetic contexts, and cultivating poetic flavors. Zhang passes the tradition of patriotism and realism in classical Chinese poetry onto the southern Song Dynasty, becoming thereby a precursor to the "Patriotic Poetry" and "Uninhibited Poetry" of his time. Zhang's poetry, in short, exists as a connecting link between the preceding tradition and the mainstream poetic convention that follows, occupying therefore a unique position in the history of ancient Chinese literature.