Comparative Study On Poetry Of Chen Fuliang And Lv Zuqian

After the1980s, as the academic circles reappraise on Neo-Confucianism in Song Dynasty, Neo-Confucianism’s poetry study is becoming more and more important, and it has obtained great achievement. However, most studies focus on Neo-Confucianism poetry, or a certain specific Neo-Confucianist, such as Shao yong, Zhu xi. As for some other excellent Neo-Confucianism poets, they are still lack of micro and deep discussion. Chen Fuliang and Lv Zuqian are famous Neo-Confucianists poets in the middle of Southern Song Dynasty, but they didn’t get enough attention because their poetic achievements were concealed by Neo-Confucianism reputation. In fact, they are good friends, and they have many same or similar views on poetic theory, theme and artistic characteristics.Chen Fuliang and Lv Zuqian were content to exercise sovereignty over a part of the country living in the "Xiao Yuan You" period of the Southern Song dynasty compared to a prosperous period of the Northern Song dynasty, but they did not give up the desire of resuming lost territory. The two men had three things in common on poetry:practical, elegant, and lyrical. However, they had divergence on the relationship of literary and Confucianism thought. In Chen Fuliang’s opinion, literary had a harmful influence on Confucianism thought, while Lv Zuqian advocated "focus both literary and Confucianism thought". The theme of the two men mainly had three types:patriotic and benevolent government, natural landscape and rural scenery, family love and friendship, In the meanwhile, the artistic feature of their poetry was distinctive, In the aspect of poem image, the image of plum blossom, frost, white hair, fallen flower and sea frequently appeared in Chen’s poem, which reflected the poet’s noble and upright character and aged and lonely feeling. On the contrary, green poor images appeared in Lv’s most poems, which reflected the inner feeling’s conflict of poet. One was optimistic, but the other was pessimistic. In the aspect of artistic conception, Chen’s is gloomy, lonely but spectacular and magnificent, while Lv’s is bright and clean, peaceful and cold. In the aspect of language performance, there also existed differences between them. Chen was good at metaphor, allusion and antithesis, having rich forms, while Lv was good at personification and form was monotonous.Through the comparative study of three aspects, it can be concluded that Chen and Lv are Neo-Confucianism poets, but their poems writing is still part of scholarly temperament. In a word, their poetry are both poetry of scholar and poetry of the poet.