Li Yu And Southern Tang Cultural Relations

This essay aims to research the cultural reasons in Li Yu's ci-poems characteristics by reviewing the culture of Nantang Dynasty in combination with his special life experience. This essay systematically discusses the relationship between LiYu's ci-poems and the culture of Nantang Dynasty, and reviews the social and cultural reason of the differences between Li Yu's ci-poems and Huajian style or other ci authers in Nantang. This essay is divided into three chapters: Chapter One explains the style of Li Yu's ci-poems under the influence of the regional culture of Nantang Dynasty. To some extent, The environment with excessive water and the literary traditions of gentleness give rise to the elegant style of Li Yu's ci-poems. At the same time, the sorrowful and sentimental style appears now and then in Li Yu's ci-poems because of the sorrowful mind caused by the specific geopolitical environment. Chapter Two elaborates the deep scar of the culture of Nantang imperial-court on Li Yu's ci-poems. At first, the ci-poems of Li Yu objectively described his own experience in the imperial-court of Nantang. The second, Li Yu's ci-poems showed the "emperor" in the displaying of his luxurious life as the emperor of Nantang, and also in the powerful and magnificent scenes described after being defeated by the Song Dynasty, shaped the style of boldness and unrestrainedness without representing as a woman. Li Yu was very versatile under the edification of the imperial-court culture of Nantang Dynasty, which was erudite and gentle. In Li Yu's delicate ci-poems, we can get the enjoyment of poetry, music and drawing. Chapter Three mainly elucidates the canonization of Confucianism and Buddhism during Nantang Dynasty, it imposed great influence on Li Yu's ci-poems. Li Yu's ci-poems had the profound meaning of the Confucian culture, such as the using of Qing-yue in its music which made the music light, refined and slow, it's containing the suffering-consciousness and the sight about life with deep feeling, and the refined artistic styles. And besides, this essay argues that the erotic pathos and illusive feeling shown in Li Yu's ci-poems are the feasible experience of his own life as well as the condition and meaning of the common existence of human being which the poet explored from Buddhist doctrines.