The Defamiliarization Feature Of Huang Tingjian’s Poetry

As the representative of “Jiangxi Poetry School”, Huang Tingjian played a leading roledue to his unique style of poetry and later had a profound impact on other poets. His poemsfocus on the form significantly. With an uneven rhyme, the “convert the old to the new”syntax and fluctuated structure his typical " Huang Tingjian style " was formed. Therefore, hispoems are more difficult for readers to understand and aesthetic appreciation and give readersan odd and new feeling experience. So he became the guru of formalistic poet in the history ofliterature.In the early20th century, a new theory born in Russia seemed to reaffirm the reputationof Huang Tingjian’s poems. Russian formalism advocated autonomy of literature. Theiropinion is the way that literature and art can be produced is to make things strange i.e.“defamiliarization” and to increase the feeling of difficulty. The Russian formalists andHuang Tingjian who hold the advanced and innovative opinion on poems writing happened tohave the same idea. In my thesis, I am trying to find “defamiliarization” elements throughanalyzing four aspects of Huang Tingjian’s poetry, which are poems content, poetic language,poems rhyme and poetry structure.First of all, in terms of the poems content Huang Tingjian was good at observing weirdand detailed things in life. Hence his poetry target a wide range of things and he always chosethe unpopular things to describe. Then describing it in a difficult way to confuse the readers.Secondly he inherited from Du Fu’s poetry of his poetic language and developed it to his ownmethods renowned as “Touching an iron and turning it into gold”“Seizing the embryo andchanging the bone”. By these means he was able to quote old sayings flexibly and transfer tofresh and appropriate metaphor. In terms of poetry rhythm he pursued ups and downs byusing odd words and rare rhyme so as to enhance the content. In the overall structure ofpoetry, he made arrangements carefully before writing the poem to make poetry lacks ofcoherent by having a glance initially, but hiding the clue in words that readers can barelyfigure out without repeatedly reading. In conclusion, Huang Tingjian’s poems have a “defamiliarization” feature of aestheticvalue. The significance of “defamiliarization” poetry written by Huang Tingjian is throughspecial arrangement which is everything can cause difficulties on understanding and aestheticappreciation. So the purpose we read Huang Tingjian’s poems is to appreciate the readingprocess and learn how he write them. The process is the purpose and meanwhile the result. Asthe Russian formalist said the aesthetic process itself is the aesthetic meaning and purpose.