On The Orientation And Dimension Of Xi Chuan's Poetry

Mounting the poetic throne in the middle of the 1980s, enjoying high prestige in the latter part of the decade, and drawing widespread attention in the 1990s, the importance of Xi Chuan, the poet, increases with the advancing of time.With the advent of the new century, people appear to grow tired of Xi Chuan. But subjecting the creative path of this poet to retrospection and clarifying his texture of poetic composition is meaningful not only in terms of literary history, but might affect the contemporary Chinese poetic writing in an active way.Xi Chuan's poetic creation is composed of three phases. 1986 and before are his period of apprenticeship. From"The Sound of Autumn"to"The Wind Starts", Xi Chuan quickly accomplished his tempering of poetic craftsmanship, establishing a poetic style that is tranquil, restrained and graceful, meanwhile laying stress on the form and musical quality of the poems. During this period he evinced tremendous interest in secrecy and the"Utopian time"typical of ancient agricultural society. 1986-1992 are his period of transition, with the stable"Xi Chuan Style"threatened by the tendency of"pure poetry", thus witnessing continuous development with the change of society, cultural context, rhetorical strategies and temporal outlook. 1992 and after belong to the period of"fake epigram", marked by the great change in language: the combined effect of disharmony, darkness, and pandemonium; rationality, irrationality, and philosophy; chanting, narrative and dramatic. This made possible the existence and increasing maturity of"fake epigram", characterized by irony and dramatizing.The present thesis attempts a clarification of the emergence, formation and drastic transformation of Xi Chuan's poetry from the perspective of rhetoric and textuality. Through a diachronic examination of the development of Xi Chuan's poetry, the author intends to probe into the writing strategies and transformation of the poet's attitudes, thus clarifying the development of China's new poetry from the early 1980s down to the late 1990s and offering the causative factors underlying Xi Chuan's view on poetry and his writing strategies. Illustrated by typical close-reading textual analysis, the thesis attempts a reasonable definition and judgement of Xi Chuan's poetry by placing this poet within the wide space of literature and delegating him to a reference system as comprehensive as possible.The introductory part, through a comparative analysis of Xi Chuan's poetry in the three phases, raises the following questions: how does Xi Chuan achieve his poetic metamorphosis from the initial juvenile lyricism to the early tendency of pure poetry marked by tranquility and restraint, and on to the opaqueness and overwhelming superfluity characteristic of the 1990s.The first part, through an extraction of the text, examines the development of the language, structure and rhetoric of Xi Chuan's early poetry from the diachronic perspective, and points out that such a transformation is ascribed to the tendency of pure poetry. In this connection the author defines the connotation and boundary of the pure poetry in the cultural context of the 1980s, and closely analyzes the strategy of acoustic rhetoric and its effect on poetry's temperamental tendency and the figure of the poet.Then gives a descriptive definition of"neo-classicism"in the light of Humian theory. Based on an extensive close-textual analysis, the author analyzes the concret connotations of the temporal outlook of Xi Chuan's"nostalgia and Utopia".The second part , by selecting"Convergence"as the text representing the poet's transitional period, the author lays bare the meaning of the disillusionment of the Utopian temporal outlook engendered by the change in poetic strategies and the transitional period of society.The third part points out the underlying reasons and irretrievability of Xi Chuan's change in his writing strategies from the poem"Paying Homage", through an exploration of the various elements such as textual structure, language, acoustic layers and the drastic transformation of societal discursive context. In the light of Brucs's definition of irony and Yuan Kejia's description of the dramatizing of new poetry, the author reveals that Xi Chuan's poetry is actually orientated towards dramatizing. An argumentative analysis of the poetic as well as social significance of"fake epigram"initiates a contemplation of Xi Chuan's contribution to the 1990 poetry. In addition, the author gives another perspective by exploring the potential influence of Borges's temporal outlook and Milosz's writing strategy on Xi Chuan's poetry.The concluding part points out the orientation and dimension of Xi Chuan's poetry, the meaning of which exists in carrying on the tireless pursuit of"style"in China's history of new poetry, and the moral implications of the time and poetry. Xi Chuan the poet signifies unequivocally the"writer of style"and the"writer of morality". This part also explores the implications of Xi Chuan's writing for contemporary poetry, the theory of euphemism and the flaws of Xi Chuan's poetry in the 1990s.