Study On Wang Bo’s Proses

As one of the forerunners advocating the innovation of literature in Early Tang Dynastyand made remarkable progress in the process, Wang Bo surpassed the meretricious aestheticstyle and the insincere writing patter that had been dominating the literary world since Qi andLiang Dynasty, while striking out in a new direction towards the natural and vigorous manneror literary creation. This dissertation, with reference to the predecessors’ research findings andnow available archives, focuses on Wang Bo’s proses of various types to study on his literarythoughts, with the purpose of discussing the overall feature and style of these proses.Wang Bo stood up to the meretricious literary creation and took actions to change it. Hisinterpretation of his literary thoughts, respectively on the aspects of value, creation, style andauthor, opposed to the popular literary writing. Although compared to the literary innovativethoughts held by Li Shimin and his vassals back in Zhenguan period, Wang Bo’s literarythoughts were not rich with new ideas. However, these thoughts were based on his ownliterary demands, the current situation of the literary world and the literary itself, thus beingconsiderably relevant, effective and feasible. These thoughts changed the prevailingmeretricious literary style in Early Tang Dynasty, burying the theoretical cornerstone for theunique style of High Tang dynasty.It could be seen from the now available documents that Wang Bo composed more thanone hundred proses, including various types such as prologues, odes, private and officialletters, eulogies, petitions, inscriptions and epitaphs. The prologues, especially ones composedfor excursions, banquets and bestowals, as the cream of his proses, are not only intense,wealthy and sincere in compassion, but also the vessel of beautiful images realizing theblending of feelings and setting, thus rather artistically appealing.Under the circumstances of the dominant literary style in Early Tang dynasty thatadvocated meretricious styles, these prologues were particularly distinctive. The complex ofLanting and autumn grieving reflected in these proses further enriched the culturalconnotations to his writings. The composition of odes manifested the change of thoughts in Wang Bo’s life. Odes on sceneries, as the demonstration of talents, are usually relativelyextravagant bearing similarity to the major odes of Han dynasty. However, unlike the odescomposed in Six dynasties in which authors were indulged in the description of sceneries,Wang Bo explicitly or implicitly expressed his intense desire to pursue achievements in suchdescription, thus greatly elevated the spiritual connotations. The greatest feature of his odesfor chanting things is the writing technique of uniting the subject and objects as one. Thistechnique means the author projects his feelings and emotions on the things he writes about,making the object a part of himself, during which self consolation by expressing feelings andreleasing sorrow is realized. The extravagant odes on sceneries and feeling-expressing odesfor chanting things delivered both continuation and development of the traditional odes.Proses of letters, eulogies and petitions were mainly composed to be submitted topowerful people for utilitarian uses such as seeking referees to aid him in passing the imperialexamination or entering politics. Most of these proses were generated in Wang Bo’s earlydays to introduce himself to the emperor and ministers, hoping to be appreciated by thegovernment and realize his dream of “obtaining high positions in a blink”. Inscriptions andepitaphs were generally composed as requested to sing praises. Constrained by the features ofthe prose type, the degree of freedom in composing would be relative low. However, he couldimpregnate his intense feelings and painting-like technique of writing into these proses,endowing them with unique artistic and aesthetic values.In his persistent literary practice, Wang Bo’s proses are characterized by their high-spirittone and imposing momentum. Feelings and words bred by the heart are expressed in theseproses in a rhythm and parallelism combined style, changing the hollow, meretricious anddegrading feature of the literature in Early Tang dynasty, thus contributing remarkably to theadvent of High Tang literature.