The Study On The Poems Of Tanyuanchun

The literature genre of Jingling represented by ZhongXing’s and TanYuanchun’s worksdistinguished itself after the rise of the literature genre known as Gong’an in the late MingDynasty. Both their poems and literal theories have evoked a great response in the literaturecircle, especially after the publication and prevalence of ShiGui(the Return of Poems) whichhas been assessed jointly by Zhong and Tan. TanYuanchun’s work is a portrayal of his life,while it also reflects Literati’s attitude towards life against the dark turbulent socialbackground. His essays integrate a wide variety of genres in the late Ming period, reaching avery high artistic achievement. His work has not only broken the traditional mimic of theancient works, but also corrected the shallowness and vulgarism in the works of Gong’anshcool. His poetry “pursuits wits and achieves thickness” and the theory of "true self" haveattracted the attention of many researchers.This paper chooses TanYuanchun’s poems and essays as the main subject, tries to do theresearch through the following parts.The introduction takes an overview of previous researches, gives a brief introduction ofthe changes from being valued in the late Ming period to being criticized in the Qing Dynasty,to disappearance with little notice. At the end of this part, there is an introduction of the lateremerged researches on TanYuanchun’s works since the1980s and1990s. Chapter1mainly introduces TanYuanchun’s family background, and the socialbackground of his times. The family background elaborates on his family and his bitterexperience of trying to distinguish himself in the civil service exam all his life. The socialbackground of his times has influenced him through the following aspects: politics, economy,and culture.Chapter2expounds on TanYuanchun’s Friends, including his friendship withZhongXing, other members of TanLing school, and members of FuShe(the RestorationSociety).Chapter3explores TanYuanchun’s thinking and its influence towards Tan’s works.Tan’s thinking can be divided into2different parts: the united philosophy of Confucianismand Taoism, the literal theory and thinking. This part elaborates on Shigui(the Return ofPoems) in the regard of Tan’s literature theory.Chapter4researches Tan’s poems. First, it introduces the historical relationship betweenTan’s works and the literary in the period of WeiJin and late Tang. Second, it makes a detailedstudy of its ideological content and artistic characteristics. The ideological content falls into5parts: poems between friends, tour poems, poems that depict things while express ambitions,poems that records events while express feelings, and documentary poems. The artisticcharacteristics are evaluated from lyrical characteristics, describing the characteristics, language features, and sentence structures.Chapter5researches Tan’s essays studying the ideological content and artisticcharacteristics in them. These essays can be divided into letters, essays about tours,biographies, and dissertations. The artistic achievements will be studied through the followingaspects: artistic conception of quietness and coldness, smooth narration, literary quotation,discretion of words usage, and poetic prose feature.The conclusion summarizes the whole article, puts forward the literature value and thesignificance of TanYuanchun’s works.