A Comparative Study Of Chinese And Western Wine Culture In Wine Poetry

Wine in the West and China, as the core of wine culture, has been playing an important role in people's social life. There are so many researches on wine culture in China and in the West. The research on wine culture in China can be summed up in two aspects, its natural property and social attribute, such as the study of wine set and the drinking customs. The Western studies also mainly focus on these two aspects, like wine tasting and table manners, and wine culture in literature as well.This paper analyzes wine culture on the basis of the previous researches through wine poetry, which is the result of the convergence of wine culture and Romantic poetry. On one hand, it is known that "intoxication" is the essence of wine culture:people seek freedom and independent personality in a drunk state. On the other hand, subjectivity, individuality and self-awareness, as the features of Romanticism, share some ideological similarities with the essence of wine culture. What's more, wine poetry, as a special category of romantic poetry, is found to present these features to a great degree. With the similarities and features mentioned above as the foundation of further study, this paper intends to make a comparative study of the wine culture in China and the West by analyzing wine poetry. Finally, the author further demonstrates the previous researchers'conclusion of Chinese "Winebibber Spirit" and the Western "Dionysian Spirit." Meanwhile, this paper discusses the deeper reasons for the differences, and suggests that further understanding of wine culture in China and the West can promote intercultural communication.There are four parts in this paper. The first part is literature review, introduces the research on wine culture home and abroad, and the research perspective of this paper. The second part gives the introduction of wine culture, including the origin of wine, the definition of wine culture and the values of wine culture. The third part introduces the Romanticism, which includes the Romantic ideologies in both China and the West, and paves the way for the similarities of the characteristics of the Romanticism and wine culture. The last part is the core of the whole paper. In this part, the author presents the wine poetry - the production of blending the wine culture and the Romanticism together. In this part, Winebibber Spirit is compared with Dionysian Spirit in some samples of wine poetry in China and the West through three pairs of relationships -wine and sacrifice, drinking and pleasure, wine and sorrows, which are reflected in wine poetry. In the end, the deeper culture origin causing the differences is discussed and some suggests are presented to promote intercultural communication between China and the West and avoid culture shock. The last part is the conclusion.