The Chang'an Temple And Poetry Creation In The Tang Dynasty

The Buddhist Taoist temples are important parts of the city of Chang’an, as well as an important part of the literati’s Chang’an life in Tang Dynasty. As architecture space, the temples have dual nature of religion and scenic spots. When it comes to poetry creation, Chang’an temples are not only a space genetating the poetry, but also a literary image composing the poetry. The paper attempts to combine the the feature of religious architectural space and the literati’s group characteristics and experiences in Chang’an, establishing a dynamic research model combined with architecture, literati and poetry, in order to elaborate the creation of poetry about Chang’an Buddhist and Taoist temples, to reveal the corresponding collective and individual mentality of literait.This thesis consists of four parts:Chapter one is the overview of Tang Dynasty Chang’an temples and poetry of temples. Based on existing research, it summarizes the architectural layout of Tang Dynasty Buddhist temples and their number, distribution and scale. Then it simply summarizes the development, content and language of Chang’an temple poetry. The poetry can be divided into religious poem and unreligious poem based on the content and language, and it can also be divided into realistic poem and imaginary poem based on regarding temples as the generating space and image constitution of the poetry. This division is the intrinsic basis of researching Chang’an temples poetry in the thesis.Chapter two studies the relationship between the religiousness of Chang’an temples and literati’s poem creation. Literati visited temples and saw Buddhist statues and ceremonies, and they would be influenced by the religious directivity of the architecture so that they would think, experience and express in the religious way. Then the religious influence and experience becomes the emotional chance to cause literati’s feeling. Taoist temples can lead to the celestial, and literati can experience the wonderland there and comprehend Tao by linking Taoist ideology. Both can be concluded as spiritual dispersing and sitting oblivion. Buddhist temples lead to pure land and nirvana, which make literati experience the heaven. Literati would use Buddhist ideology to integrate the understanding of Buddhism into poetry. Both can be summarized as enlightment. By showing the temples’ religious influence and literati’s experience, the thesis discusses the relation between the religiousness of temples and poem creation, and it also explains the ordinary features of Chang’an temple poetry.Chapter three firstly interprets the scenery of Chang’an temples. Then from the perspective of typical literati visiting the temples, the thesis outlines the poetry creation and group mentality in three parts by dividing literati into three groups.Chapter four discusses the interaction between Chang’an temples, literati’s experience and memory of Chang’an and the poetry creation. As the space state of Chang’an, temples interwines with literati’s life there. Chang’an temples are not only the places which literati can visit but also the memory symbols that carry their complicated feelings. These actual and memorial temple images are used in the poetry and become the literal images that contain life and emotion meaning. Temple is the epitome of Chang’an, which is the viewpoint of literati to appreciate Chang’an and it carries their feeling. Temple images in the poetry of literati can reflect the ups and downs of Chang’an, and they are also blended their feeling to Chang’an and their nation. So Chang’an temple poetry become the combination of poetry and history, which contains the history of nation and emotion, and it distinctively records the ups and downs of Chang’an and the and feeling of Chang’an literati.