A Study Of Southern Dynasty Thanks-for-giving Poem

On the basis of previous counterparts' research, thanks-for-giving poem of southern dynasty leaves a room for further study. This article is consisted of five parts. For the prelude, it gives a brief introduction on the situation of thanks-for-giving poem research and the leeway for study while defining "southern dynasty" and "thanks-for-giving poem" and showing statistic data analysis. The second part put the emphasis on the study of its three subject matters, include feelings of moving and death, homesickness of men traveling far away from home, hedge-writer mind-set. These three subject-matters are mainly related with the writers' personal life history, social background and character. The sunset and bird imagoes are used to express its subject matter. Buddhism started to gain its popularity in southern dynasty and translation of Buddhist scriptures brought to light the discovery of melody and rhythms of the Chinese language, which caused a creation trend of poem of melody and colour. Therefore, the third part of this article by drawing a clear line between emotion and melody, colour divide thanks-for-giving poem into three categories: the one that shows emotion out of melody and colour; the one that diffuses emotion into melody and colour; and the one that stresses melody and colour but dwarfs emotion. The fourth part discusses about the reasons of composing thanks-for-giving poem and poem style. During the Qi dynasty and Liang dynasty, thanks-for-giving poem gained a remarkable popularity. The temperament it expresses concentrated on self-egoism not the general humane care. Men of letters at that time were devoid of lofty ideals and social responsibility, which caused their poems lack of deeper meanings thus resulting in a style of slimness, fragileness and sag. Investigates its reason, mainly has three points. Firstly, frequent alternation of dynasty brought about killings and literary persecution now and then. At that political turbulent time, most men of letters expressed their melancholy on future career, panic, and being worldly-wise and playing save. Secondly, the idea of sacrifice for justice in Confucianism were on the wane while the idea of indifference in metaphysics and the penetration of self-protection philosophy, Taoism's immortality and Buddhism's rebirth nothingness exercised their influence. Thirdly, emperors of successive dynasties attached importance to literature especially poetry, establishing literary groups headed by the loyal family members. This way, men of letters have opportunities to exchange visits, thanks-for-giving poem responsory, plus literature and art. In the meantime, it provided men of letters a stage to display their poetry genius which might take them into official career. The cult for literature took society by storm. Through the exchanges of thanks-for-giving poem responsory, men of letters displayed their talents, have emotion contact and verbalized the willingness of guide and support, thus pour into the new content for the poem. The fifth part is conclusion that discourses on the contribution and defects of thanks-for-giving poetry. Its unique features uncover themselves in the course of thanks-for-giving poem exchange and the personality, mind-set, emotion and needs of the writers will be seen; meanwhile, emotion contact and spiritual compensation might been regarded as its functions as well. In conclusion, due to chronological limitation, some thanks-for-giving poems had the defects, for instance, some of them were composed as social intercourse cliche; some were simply flattering remarks; some were empty without emotions but simply word game. However, the essence of thanks-for-giving poetry built a bridge connecting Jian'an poetry and prosperous Tang dynasty poetry. The bond of poetry development in the successive dynasty did not break but it just moved forward in a zigzag way.