A Study Of Luo Yin's Yongwu Poetry

Luo Yin, the Poet in late Tang Dynasty, did not receive sufficient criticalattention he deserves from contemporary literary historians in their various works.Not until the early twentieth century when Lu Xun and Mao Zedong had spoken highlyof the unique values of Luo's works—mainly poetry and literary essays—did theacademe begin to recognize his stature in literary history. This thesis, however,was not intended to explore the very historical reasons that caused the criticalinsouciance/exuberance of Luo's poetry but to focus on Luo Yin's Yongwu poetrywhich is an area almost unmarked by any in-depth studies. I approached Luo's Yongwupoetry by analyzing a good part of them according to a variety of categories. Bydoing so, I attempted to restore Luo Yin's Yongwu poetry the significance in thehistory of its kind. First of all, I gave a brief account of the literary historyof Yongwu poetry as a context. And then I postulated Luo's historical positionand proposed my conception of categorizing Luo's Yongwu poetry. I selected 77Yongwu poems from Luo's ouevre (some are by the same titles) for analysis.Specifically, I explained in terms of poetic genre why Qi Jue comprised a majorproportion in the whole of Luo's Yongwu poetry. My conclusion is that Luo's Yongwupoetry is multivalent in the sense that characterized by its propensity of sarcasmand compassion, by its likeness to Li Po's optimism and to Tu Fu's balance ofform and content, by Yuan Zhen and Bai Juyi's lucidity and lyrical fluency.