Research On Zhangyu’s Poetry

Zhang Yu, the Taoist poet in Yuan Dynasty, has extensive influence in the poetic circle. He was proficient in writing poems and calligraphy, and widely praised by the people at that time. Ni Zan, the poet in Yuan Dynasty, said,"The poetries, calligraphies and paintings of Zhen Ju honorable person ranked first in Taoist enlightenment of Yuan Dynasty." Although Zhang Yu is a Taoist, he is born in a literary family in Jiangnan, and he is filled with the elegant demeanor of Confucian scholar. He can be regarded as half-hermit and half-Taoist in his lifetime. In his early years, he joined into the Taoism, and his poetic style was characterized by elegance and exquisiteness; in his later years, he turned to be the Confucian disciple, but his poetry style changed, and developed into being indifferent to trifles and being unrestrained.This paper is divided into four chapters. Chapter I is themed as Research on the Thoughts of Zhang Yu in His Lifetime, which summarizes Zhang Yu’s lifetime, and reveals the Confucian and Taoist life choice of Zhang Yu and the deep cause from the social background and Taoism development in Yuan dynasty and the hermit tradition in China, and outlines Zhang Yu’s life in details which seems to be contradictory but very true. Meanwhile, this chapter also makes brief analysis on the Taoism experience life and the influence of Taoism culture on Zhang Yu’s poetry. Chapter II is the Theme Content of Zhang Yu’s Poetry, which makes classification research on the contents of Zhang Yu’s poetry, and mainly includes three aspects:the narration of demeanor in the history-chanting poems or intone poems, the expression of the poetic feelings in the reciprocal poems and the pictorial poems (the poems are written on the painting), and the presentation of seclusion ideology in the description of Jiangnan scenery. It is hopeful that the panorama of Zhang Yu’s poetic creation can be revealed through the researches from these three aspects. This is the key part of the paper. Chapter III is themed as the Artistic Style and Artistic Feature of Zhang Yu’s Poetry, which deduces and defines the elegant and unrestrained style of Zhang Yu’s poetries from three aspects, and expounds the specific expressions of Zhang Yu’s poetries (such as the literary quotation and antithesis, etc), and emphatically analyzes the artistic feature of Zhang Yu’s works of calligraphy which combine the poetry and calligraphy. Chapter IV is themed as the Status and Influence of Zhang Yu’s Poetry, which mainly expounds his status in the poetic circle of Yuan Dynasty, and his role in the retro tide that the poems in Yuan Dynasty learns from poets in Tang Dynasty, as well as his contributions to the development of Taoist poetry in Yuan Dynasty.