Criticism On Tao Yuanming In The Southern Song Dynasty

Being one of the greatest poets in the literature history of China, Tao Yuanming's literary success as well as his historical position had reached the peak in the Song Dynasty. People in the Song Dynasty not only discovered the value of Tao Yuanming and his poems, but also read him from the theoretical research angle, and this has made the criticism & research on Tao Yuanming a very special and important literary phenomenon in the ancient literature criticism history. Followed the criticism on Tao and his poems by some great litterateurs such as Su Shi, and based on special conditions and cultural background of that age, literators of the Southern Song Dynasty studied and commented on Tao from all angles. On one hand, this greatly improved and enriched the understanding of Tao and his poems and made the criticism further mature; on the other hand, this also radically established the classic position of Tao's moral & literary qualities. Therefore, the position and importance of criticism on Tao Yuanming in the Southern Song Dynasty goes without saying in the history of Tao criticism.However, due to the historical succession from the Northern Song to the Southern Song, the scholars often do the comment through integrating the both dynasties, this, to be sure, is of great advantage to have a integral knowledge in such a climax period of the Tao criticism history, but it also neglected the differences of time, criticism achievements, and characters between the both dynasties. So in this article we stand in the special times of the Southern Song and research into how Tao and his poems were understood in such special conditions and cultural environment of that age, and we are dedicated in discovering the special significance of this understanding involved and the common places between him and the times spirit and poem spirit. In a word, we mainly make a study of those questions with three parts in the article.Firstly, we briefly trace the criticism and research conditions about Tao before the Southern Song Dynasty. The obscurity to simplicity about Tao's poems was not accomplished in an action but a long history. It had been improved and accumulatedfrom Nanchao and Beichao by Yan Yanzhi to the Northern Song Dynasty by Su Shi and Huang Tingjian, although it was so hard to avoid some neglected places and the partiality, it finally established the base of Tao study development and arranged both material and theory for the climax admiration and commitment on Tao in the Southern Song Dynasty.Secondly, we concretely interpret the criticism contents and aesthetic evaluations on Tao in the Southern Song Dynasty. As the center of the whole article, this part respectively reveals the contents on Tao criticism in the Southern Song Dynasty at three aspects,(1) Criticism and research on Tao by literators in the Southern Song Dynasty: we mainly discuss the judgment of Tao's privacy, the argument of his philosophy, and the full excavation of his bosom and characters etc., and strive for reproducing the understanding and evaluation on Tao's personality by the scholars then.(2) Criticism and research on Tao's poems by literators in the Southern Song Dynasty: from their textual research and variorum into Tao Anthology, the deep analysis of the Tao poem's artistic expression, and the establishment of classic position of Tao's Poems, we find there was not only deep and rational knowledge but also the exaggeration under the idealist philosophy thoughts, and this marked the Tao Criticism then as a dispute.(3) We do a summing-up comment on the main study methods for Tao criticism in the Southern Song Dynasty and the Tao and Tao Imitation Wave.Lastly, we do a certain discussion on the reasons and characters for prosperous criticism on Tao during the Southern Song Dynasty. For the reasons, we mainly seek them from the social thoughts and literature development status in that period and excavate a series of historical, social and cultural elements in hiding as well as the literature itself. At the same time, we generalize and summarize the external characters it had shown.