Xiao Poetry Study

During the Southern Liang Dynasty, Xiao Tong (501-531) was a ruler known as Prince ZhaoMing, who was a citizen of LanLing. Despite being the ruler, he was inspired by the Wen Xuan and eventually became an important person in the academic field. This book is not only highly researched in the academic field, but it is also researched internationally. The book even outshines Xiao Tong himself and has become an individual research topic. Other than the Wen Xuan, the academic community has conducted very little researches on Xiao Tong’s personal creation. As Xiao Tong’s ZhaoMing Tai Zi Ji is incomplete, there are only twenty seven poems preserved till today. However, it is still worth researching. This thesis mainly relies on historical records and previous researches conducted to further understand and analyze Xiao Tong’s poems. It consists of five parts which research Xiao Tong’s education, the themes for his poems and the accompaniment of music. The first chapter analyzes Xiao Tong’s educational background through historical biographies and Xiao Tong’s works. Nurtured by Emperor Wu of Liang, an organization of scholars managed to roughly outline Xiao Tong’s educational background by studying Xiao Tong’s education, correspondents and friendships. The second chapter consists of Buddhist poems created by Xiao Tong. The contents of these poems are lyrical in nature and Xiao Tong’s attitude towards life tends to lean towards Confucianism. Thus, this chapter will discuss special features of Xiao Tong’s Buddhist poems and his way of life. Chapter three touches on how ancient and modern scholars set object poems as a basic foundation to define Xiao Tong’s object poems and at the same time study its themes and special artistic features. The fourth chapter consists of Xiao Tong’s Yue-Fu poems, which is based on the ancient style, except the contents have been renewed. As such, this chapter examines the theme, type and special artistic features of Yue-Fu. Chapter five proceeds to analyze why various ancient versions have listed down different writers for the same poem.