Researches On The Imagery Of Cicada In Tang Poetry

The Tang Dynasty is the prosperity and mature stage of the imagery’s development. There weren’t many cicada poems in the early Tang Dynasty,but it appeared a surge in the number of cicada poems in the mid and late Tang Dynasty. The imagery of cicada became a prominent imagery in the Tang Dynasty, and the cicada poems’connotation constantly enrich.Cicada is widespread in real life, it often haunts in the late spring, summer and autumn. Cicada breeds and grows in the dark underground. The lifespan of cicada is generally two or three years, and the longest is seventeen years, however they appear on the ground only a few weeks of life time. For this characteristic of the life circle, it is easy to cause the poets’ association. In the cicada culture before the Tang Dynasty, the cicada had been contained a sense of sentimentality, and it is on behalf of the noble quality and the detached spiritual pursuit. Then these aspects could arouse the literati’s lovesickness. The Modern-style Poetry becomes the main style of poems after the Tang Dynasty. Chinese ancient poetry and ode have the tradition that expresses the aspirations by objects. This tradition promotes the cicada poems to be prosperous. Poor intellectuals are the main part in literature in the Tang Dynasty. Literati encounter ups and downs in life, cicada imagery causes the strong resonance on them, and the poets created a large number of the poems.In the Tang Dynasty, from civilians to the emperor, monk to geisha, they all participate in writing poems. Poets who have different status have different contents. Emperors and imperial concubines’cicada poems have the deep court atmosphere; other females’poems have the wider subjects, which are about lovesickness and melancholy. The cicada poems of the official intellectuals reflect their experiences. The monks’cicada poems generally present the characteristics of quiet and lonely.In the type of emotional expression of the cicada imagery, the number of expressing the noble sentiments in the cicada poems are few, but the wonderful works are more. Imagery of cicada is the carrier which expresses the lovesickness and melancholy of the ancient literati. This kind of the lovesickness and melancholy covers a deep friendship, love and homesickness. The feeling of autumn’s grief in the poems expresses the sighs that time lost, the past youth and the old sigh. Poets in late Tang Dynasty emphasis the regret of the aspiration which haven’t come true. Poems on the motherland convey their deep love to the hometown and the country. Besides, expressing the leisure is also one aspect of emotional type in the cicada imagery of Tang Poetry.The Tang Dynasty is usually divided into four stages, which include the early Tang Dynasty,the prosperous period of Tang Dynasty, the mid Tang Dynasty and the late Tang Dynasty. In the Tang Dynasty, the number of cicada poems in the mid and late Tang Dynasty is more than the other periods. The early Tang Dynasty poems of cicada imagery are mainly through court poets and the four laureate poets to show. In the prosperous period of Tang Dynasty, as it appeared the famous pastoral poets and frontier fortress poets, cicada imagery was enlarged the scope. There also appeared cicada figure in the desert and frontier. Cicada imagery in the prosperous Tang Dynasty shows life-oriented, personalized features. In the middle of Tang Dynasty, Bai Juyi wrote the most cicada poems, which mainly about the expression of warm nostalgia. The writers of the mid Tang Dynasty mostly had rough encounters, so the poems expressed the sigh of the lost time and the unsmooth success path. In the late Tang Dynasty, eunuch controlled the regime, and political incidents made the central power weakened, so the literati were not much hopeful to the imperial court, and lacked the vigor and vitality that intellectuals in the prosperous period of Tang Dynasty had. So the cicada imagery in this term often shows features of melancholy sadness and deeper grief, and it often combines with the "sunset","setting sun " or "sophora japonica" imagery.In the Tang Dynasty, many of the cicada poems relate to the "disease", especially in the mid and late Tang Dynasty. When the poets were alone, they would emerge the lovesickness, or had the sad feeling when they faced the fall. But when they got along with their friends, they felt very happy. The sorrow and sentimental feeling are the main tones of the cicada poems about the "disease". No matter whether they worried about their own health or the friends and the relatives’health, they all reflected this kind of mood in their poems. When the cicada is separated from the creative subjects, the cicada poems show the common melancholy, and in this situation, the relationship between the cicada and the creative subjects is separative. But when the cicada and the creative subjects were unified, the creative subjects expressed the deep feeling in the "sick cicada" itself. And the sick cicada showed the writers’voice, and this type of cicada poems gets a better achievement.