A Study Of Zhang Yan And His Friends

This article refers to the work of the predecessors and contemporaries, on the premises of verifying the lives of Zhang Yan and his friends, the approach of commenting Song with Song,their thoughts on poetry and poetry style are comprehensively studied, as well as it tries to recover the ecology of creation during the period of late Song dynasty and early Yuan dynasty,aiming to facilitating recognition and judgement of Zhang Yan and his friends, Which can be mainly divided into three chapters.The first chapter: according to the historic records, consulting the previous research, it combed Zhang Yan’s family and his life, the friendship of Zhang Yan and Ci-poets have been investigated and it is carried on the period system. It also analyses their thought of home and nation displayed in responsorial activitiesof Ci. The purpose of the first chapter is to lay a foundation for elaborating knowing the person and discussing about the life in the next paragraphs. The second chapter: it is mainly based on Ci Yuan of Zhang Yan, combined with related information as notes on Ci-poets, inscription, word order and so on, it recapitulated the thoughts of Ci-poems with Zhang Yan and his friends. Firstly, on the stylistic features, it argues that Ci is independent on the style of poetry and has a significantly different trend with poetry on those characteristics including through emotion to express ambition and melody harmony. Secondly, in terms of creation, it requests that Ci’s words should be deeply polished;it should use more function words, absorb words from poems of Tang dynasty, be proficient with allusion and have a novel and high conception. Again, in the terms of aesthetics, it seeks the beauty of Qing Kong and Sao Ya, The former advocates natural, regarding verve and neglecting appearance, while the latter insists in regressing classical elegance and retaining bones. The third chapter: it sums up the Ci-poetrys’ unique style of Zhang Yan and his Ci-friends under the guidance of the Ci-concept. First of all, their poetries valued conception and showed novel and lofty themes. Secondly, the word advocated elegant Ci and scraped the obscene and vulgar Ci to express dignified and elegant feelings. Again, the word had implicit and deep characteristics, through the way of putting emotion into the scene and using the scene to express sentiment, it implicitly and restrainedly placed their thought of home and nation, and they tactfully and vaguely expressed the emotion of loyalty and love by focusing emotion on the matter and meaning within words.It argues that Zhang Yan and most of his Ci-poets friends are the adherents of Southern Song Dynasty who kept the integrity, their thoughts on peotry are the sublimation and summary of thoughts on peotry in late Song dynasty, which is of significance to maintain the independent status of Ci-poetry styling, improve the taste of it and standardize Ci composition;their Ci compositions have practiced his theoretic advocacy, which is unique in the circle of South Song poets, enriched its styling and schools, exerted profound influence on the decedents. It’s an indispensible part in the development history of Ci in Tang and Song dynasties, which is the cultural in heritage we should treasure most.