A Study Of Rhetorical Art In Bai Juyi's Allegorical Poems

Bai Juyi is another realistic poet after Du Fu in the mid-Tang Dynasty. Over the past century many studies have been made by scholars, but relatively speaking, the study of language rhetorical art in poetry especially in allegorical poems was weak, systematic exposition even less. This paper tries to proceed from the perspective of language Rhetoric focuses mainly on the five distinctive rhetorical devices such as Simile, Reduplicative Words, Allusion, Contrast and XuZi in Bai Juyi's poems, and to compare the two poets Yuan Zhen and Bai Juyi we can discuss its style and achievement deeply in language arts.I. Introduction. Outline of current research on Bai Juyi's allegorical poems, the study methods and meanings in this paper as well as to define the term of"rhetoric".II. Simile. The success of use of tropes depends more on the similarity relationship between tenor and vehicle. So firstly the author from implicit and explicit point of view of metaphor value (similar point) to analyze and classify Bai's allegorical poems. Secondly from six aspects to illustrate the rhetoric effect which demonstrated the close relationship between the formation of Bai's popular style and the rational use of metaphor.III. Reduplicative Words. The rhetorical device that is characteristic of Chinese language. Firstly, the author visited in classification the use of Reduplicative Words in Bai's allegorical poems. Secondly, it shows the rhetorical effects of Reduplicative Words from three aspects of appearance, situation, rhythm for discussion.IV. Allusion. It includes historical facts and old saying. Firstly the author divided allusion into direct use, transform use and converse use. Secondly, it classified the allusion characteristics as three points: 1. high quantity, wide sources ;2. use of familiar allusion ;3. No trace.V. Contrast. It is common to use of comparative rhetoric devices in Bai's allegorical poems. Firstly, the author will define the meaning of contrast. Secondly, it classifies the comparative rhetoric devices into three types: class comparison, the author with others comparison and other comparison.VI. XuCi. It is common, unique and rich in Bai's allegorical poems. Firstly, the author classifies it from the perspective of individuals for discussion. Secondly, its rhetorical effect was divided into rendering emotion, prepared expression and freely use.VII. The comparison of allegorical poems between Yuan Zhen and Bai Juyi. As the name of Yuan belongs with that of Bai and they had many poems in the same name, so through the comparison we will know what kind of figures will make the poetry more popular. The author discussed separately from three angles of subject construction, sentence selection and description of methods.VIII. Conclusion. It overviews of the overall thesis and the main conclusions.