The New Development Of Yifu Ma’s Confucian Poetics

Ma Yifu is different greatly from other scholars of contemporary new confucianism in that he lays emphasis on the traditional poem teaching of confucian. On the philosophical level, Ma inherited and developed the the traditional poem teaching of confucian through “quoting Buddism into confucianism”. On the practical level, Ma attached importance to the sublimation from poet creation to theory. Meanwhile, he also combined with relevant western academic background.Therefore, Ma’s poetic theory has become the rear guard of the confucian traditional poem teaching. Baced on the philosophical foundation of Ma’s thoughts, poetic discourse and poetry creation, this thesis will comprehensively study the main characteristics and contemporary significance of Ma’s poetics.According to Ma’s poetic speech, we can generally summarize Ma’s poetics as source theory, creation theory and critique theory. From the perspective of source theory, Ma thinks peotry is in full harmony with the heart of the source and he considers the feelings as the carrier of poetry, that is, poetry conveys “Dao” and “Yili” through the way of sensibility. In this sense, Ma lays theory foundation of poetics in mind source, which is an important contribution that Ma made to the traditional theory of poetry ontology. From the angle of creation theory, based on his own creation practices, Ma discusses subjective conditions of poetry creation and the relation between subjects and objects. Besides, Ma emphasizes greatly on the subjectivity of the author, the influence that the moral cultivation and cultural levels of the creation subject has on the poetry creation. From the perspective of creation skills, Ma succeeds in school of jiangxi poetry, stresses the importance of “learnig”, and promotes poetic rhythm and polishing words to a new level. Finally, on critique theory, Ma not only has made specific comments on great poets such as Li Bai and Du Fu, but also com up with two significant criterions of evaluating poetry: Yili and artistic criterions, which are the modern form of writings are for conveying truth.Under the background of eastward spread of Western Culture, Ma puts the morality into poetry, remoulds traditional poetics by refering to Buddism and western culture, revitalizes the connotation of classical poetics. In the process of the transformation of the modern traditional culture and national revival, Ma’s confidence of the traditional culture, and bearing spirits to continue the age and lost knowledge still have important practical significances. However, Ma lays too much emphasis on the educational and communicative functions of the traditinal confucian and poetics, which constrains the development of modern confucian poetics to some extent.