The Ethos & Mindsets Of The Wei & Jin Esquires Reflected In The Emotions And Styles Of Wei & Jin Verses

During the Wei & Jin period, the turbulent situation of endless wars, slaughters and famines gave rise to a sentimental and misanthropic state of mind among the esquires, thus in Wei & Jin verses expressions of sentimentalism and reclusion abounded. At the same time, Wei & Jin was a spirit-independent and ideology-indulgent period. The coming down of The East Han Dynasty resulted in the eclipse of the Confucianism of Han Dynasty and the flourish of Metaphysics. The topic of Wei & Jin Metaphysics was a reflection of the value of individual life. The esquires' feeling of content to retain sovereignty over a part of the country had shifted their attitude from facing the reality to probing into the mental world, namely, appreciating the beauty of the landscape, and the argument between speech and its meaning, etc. As a result abstruse poems became the mainstream of poems in the East Jin Dynasty. The awakening and strengthening of the esquires' individual consciousness accounted for the lyric characteristics of Wei & Jin verses and at the mean time, the styles of the verses were becoming diversified. Exactly speaking, there were generosity and righteousness in Jian An verses, philosophical thought and affection in Zheng Shi poems, exceeding sentimentalism in West Jin verses, and modesty in East Jin verses.This thesis is divided into four parts.The part of general introduction mainly clarifies the situations of Wei & Jin, social current of thought of the time, the influence the aesthetical characteristic of the time had upon the ethos and mindsets of the Wei & Jin Esquires, and the internal connections between the esquires' ethos and mindsets and the emotions and styles of Wei & Jin verses.Chapter 1 The emotion of the Wei & Jin verses. Emotion is the ferment of literature, and is needed most in the catalysis of verses. The social chaos and insignificance of human lives caused by frequent wars elicited esquires' concern of life and death, and the inextricable contradiction between their aspirations to success and the lapse of time, along with their unrecognized talents, imbued boundless melancholy emotions into their poems. The esquires' passion in their lives, their fearless attitude toward death, their lofty sentiments and their calamitous experiences shrouded a heavy color of righteousness on their poems. Unexpected coming of death always induced the esquires into abandoning themselves to enjoyment of their lives, doting themselves to the beauty of mountains and waters, and building a paradise of their own, which had constituted the other aspect of Wei & Jin verses.Chapter2 Elaborate the influence of Jin aesthetical characteristics and the metaphysical empty talk upon the exceedingly sentimental style of the West Jin and the natural and modest style of the East Jin poems. The Wei & Jin esquires' vogue of attaching much importance to forms exerted a certain influence upon the exceeding sentimental style of West Jin poems. The best representative of West Jin style was Lu Ji, whose "Wen Fu" very well embodied the theories and ideology of West Jin poems, and "poems come from sentiments" was one of his viewpoints toward poems. Thus it was considered a shortcut to grasp the West Jin style of poems by analyzing Lu Ji's theories of poems and poem composition. Compared with those of West Jin, the esquires of East Jin attached more importance to mentality, and metaphysical empty talk serves to display their spirit and nurtured the modest style of East Jin poems.Chapter 3 Expatiate that men's awakening led to literary consciousness, which had made the emotions and styles of Wei & Jin poems different from those of Qin Dynasty and Han Dynasty. Even women and children in Wei & Jin period were self-independent, which shows that esquires must have more passion in thinking independently and more room to do so. The Wei & Jin esquires' perusal of such classic works as The Book of Songs, the Book of Changes, Lao Tzi, and Zhuangzi enabled them to quote as freely from these classics as if they were using their own words. Quotation from preceding literary works could be considered as the threshold of literary consciousness. Metaphysics and metaphysical empty talk are based upon "Three Mysteries" that have mental detachment as their core, which indicates that Wei & Jin esquires had broken away from the yoke of classics and their advocacy of individual language became the mainstream. The need for poets to express their personal feelings was further strengthened and their self-consciousness became more evident, which could be verified from the emotions expressed in Ruan Ji's Yong Huai. Ruan Ji's poems portrayed the social scenes at the end of Wei Dynasty and shown his unique style of "subtlety and profundity".With the literature accomplishment of Wei & Jin esquires was enhanced at large and the strengthening of literary consciousness, the aesthetical characteristics of literary works received more and more attention and esquires enjoyed reading each others' poems, which in turn accelerated the rate that poems spread, enlarged the spreading scope of poems and inspired the writers' passion of writing. On the other hand, for the section of esquires who were writers and readers at the same time, they could learn from others' poems and hence increased their skills of writing.From what mentioned above, we can come to the following conclusions:1. The turbulence during the time of Wei & Jin and the aesthetical characteristics of sentimentalism account for tendency that sentimentalism became the mainstream in poem at that time.2. Generally speaking, the style of Wei & Jin poems experienced a shifting from modesty to complication and subtlety(the modest style of East Jin is a reverse of the exceeding sentimental style of West Style), which is the sure result of the development of esquires' individual aesthetical consciousness.