On The Artistic Origin Of Liu Zongyuan 's Poems

The Yuan He period of the Tang Dynasty is marked as the second peak of the Tang poetry for there were various poetic genres and a great quantity of famous poets at that time. The poetic schools like han-meng and yuan-bai were quite popular at that time. Liu Zongyuan, suffering from the failure of the Yongzhen innovation, however, was away from the political and cultural centre, which, in some sense, made his poetry unique at emotion expression and artistic style. His poems seem quite peaceful ostensibly, yet in essence there are struggles and unlimited frustrations, showing the poet’s indomitable spirit. In regard to his artistic style, many scholars believe that it is a inheritance of Qu Yuan’s spirit, while others argues that Liu’s poems are similar to Tao Yuanming’s and Xie Lingyun’s poems. Actually, his poems have Li Sao’s High and steep, Tao Yuanming’s Apprehension, Xie Lingyun’s refinement as well as integrating Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism into his poems. The reasons for the formation of Liu Zongyuan’s poetic style are the influence of the profound ideological origin, unique life experience, deep thoughts and artistic sensitivity. Thus, his lonely, quiet, deep style is formed. Therefore, it is a necessity to probe into his art origin.The article consists of three parts, the introduction part, the body part and the conclusion part. The body part can further be divided into five chapters.In the introduction part, the article discusses the objectives and significance of the topic, the current situation of the study on Liu’s poetry, the research ideas and introduces the main work that should be done concerning the topic.Chapter one mainly introduces Liu’s life profile and his poems. The first section concerns his life profile. The second section makes a comprehensive summary of his four creation stages and five kinds of themes. In this way, his peoms can be understood from the creating period and contents. The third section is the summary of Liu’s artistic features, namely, the language style, the techniques of expression, the emotion expression and the artistic conceptions.Chatper two mainly probes into Liu’s acceptance of Qu Yuan. Section one introduces Liu’s acceptance of Qu’s spirit from their life experience. Section two argues Liu’s acceptance of Qu’s political ideal from their similar political pursues. Section three discusses Liu’s acceptance and development of Qu’s literary creation. Chapter three mainly states Liu’s acceptance of Tao’s poems. Section one introduces Liu and Tao’s similar experience of seclusion. Section two discusses Liu’s acceptance of Tao’s poems from the similar subjects, including Chinese pastoral poetry and historical poems. Section three probes into Liu’s acceptance of Tao’s artistic features, in which poetic images and writing styles are elaborated.Chapter four mainly elaborates Liu’s acceptance of Xie’s poems, of which two sections are divided. Section one introduces their similar life experience and loneliness. Section two states Liu’s acceptance of Xie’s poetic themes, sentence patterns and text structures.Chapter five mainly states Liu’s acceptance of Confucianism, Buddhism, Laoism, in which three sections are further discussed. Section one introduces Liu’s acceptance of Confucianism from the aspects of emotional expression. Section two discusses Liu’s acceptance of Buddhism from the aspects of advocating Buddhism and seclusion. Section three states Liu’s acceptance of Taoism from three aspects:the formation of the fresh style, artistic techniques and Les Fables.The last part further discusses Liu’s acceptance from Li Bai, Du Fu, and makes a conclusion of the study so that Liu’s self-contained poetic styles are highlighted.