Wang Fuzhi’s Poetics On Book Of Poetry

Wang Fuzhi was well known as a noted ideologist and litterateur in the history of Chineseliterature. His poetic theories, although generally neglected by researchers in the past, hasgone through advance in development by leaps and bounds in the last thirty years, duringwhich plenty of monographs on the subject were published. A considerably large amount ofarguments brought forward in these monographs also have been widely accepted and valuedby researchers. Nowadays, further research on Wang’s poetic theories is still being conductedcontinuously along with theses released on his propositions of “emotion and scene”,“representative knowledge”, as well as “imagination, observation, socialization and satireby poetry”, on which basically well-accepted conclusions have been reached, whereasresearch on other propositions was somehow unsatisfactory. Despite the fact that Wang Fuzhiissued a multitude of arguments in his poetic theories, these arguments, investigated thoughinduction, were mostly based on Book of Poetry, which is why his theories on Book of Poetryis chosen as the main topic of this dissertation.In this thesis, Wang’s theories on Book of Poetry are discussed on four aspects includingthe relation of poetry to rites and music with musical features of poetry, his proposition of“imagination, observation, socialization and satire by poetry”, his arguments of literarystyles, as well as his allegation of “thorough exertion of talents and comprehensiveunderstanding of laws”First, the elucidation of the relation between poetry and music was one of the focal pointsin Wang’s poetic theories, to which seldom scholars attached this much importance inChinese literary critical history. Existent research findings majorly addressed this topicdiscretely on three aspects including poetry and rites, poetry and music as well as the musicalfeatures of poetry. However, these aspects, factually bearing close logical connections withone another, formed an inseparable organic whole, and thus should not be investigatedseparately. Second, as to the expositions of his proposition of “imagination, observation,socialization and satire by poetry”, conclusions on the subject have been established; nevertheless it worked as a crucial criterion for his poetic theories, hence not to be neglectedand accordingly illustrated exclusively in one whole chapter of this thesis. Finally, Wang’sallegation of “thorough exertion of talents and comprehensive understanding of laws” wasrarely involved in existent theses or monographs, on which viewpoints also differed. However,the important role it played in Wang’s poetic theories has been invariably highly valuedwhenever mentioned. Wang’s poetic theories, notably featured by wholeness, were integratedto an organic whole by this allegation which functioned as an encompassing assertion.Through investigation of this argument, not only the exposition of Book of Poetry by Wang,but also its interaction with other arguments could be found.