The Experiential Criticism In The Poetry Criticism Of The Song Dynasty

"Experience", as a philosophical cognitive manner and an aesthetic study methodology, was raised and systematically constructed in the West in late 19th century. However, the experiential criticism, applied as a manner of literary criticism, dose not emerge and come into being today but existed in early time of the literary criticism. No matter in Chinese or in the Western traditional literary criticism, distinguishing experiential characteristics were gleamingly presented, especially intensively presented in the poetry criticism of the Song Dynasty. Compared with Compared the poetry criticism of the Song Dynasty and the former generation, The uniquely features of the Song Dynasty is in focusing on poets as the object of the criticism, while the criticized content turned into the study of aesthetic experience. Generally speaking, distinct characteristics of experiential criticism were displayed in the poetry criticism of the Song Dynasty, in which the literary criticism focuses on the aesthetic experience of poetry and experience of the poets' lives, and display the artistic meanings of the poetry by aesthetically experiencing of the poetry and reveal connotation of the poets' thoughts and value of the their lives by experiencing of the poets' lives.In this essay, it tries to borrow ideas from the Western definition "Experience" and its theoretic, in order to explain the significance that "Experience" brings to literary creation and literary criticism by representing the concept and theoretic of "Experience" and tries to define the experiential criticism and set up its theoretical construction. On this condition, this essay discusses and researches the experiential criticism of the poetry criticism of the Song Dynasty and reviews and studies the poetry criticism of the Song Dynasty back-grounded with the overall history of Chinese traditional literary criticism at the viewing angle of "experiential criticism". Two steps are here when we study how critics in the Song Dynasty criticized poetry applying experiential criticism. The first step is experiential appreciation, and the second is experiential criticism. Experiential appreciation refers to artistic experience to material works of poems while experiential criticism, mainly evaluates the whole creation works of the poet by experiencing the life of the poet. General ideation characteristics and criticizing modes of poetry experiential criticism in the Song dynasty are summarized through this study, and tries to go to root of characteristics of experiential criticism connotated in Chinese traditional literary criticism, poetry concepts with experiential criticism features and criticizing modes, so as to harmonize and digest the ancient and modern, to build up a new systemic experiential criticism mode which is convenient for learning and operating as well as doable and effective to review Chinese classical literary criticism, and pleasant and surprised discoveries are expected.