A Study Of "Guanlin Poetry"

Guan Lin Poetry Notes,the only work of Wu Yu,was created in the period between Northern Song Dynasty and Southern Song Dynasty.The book contains 115 clauses,which cover various aspects including poetic criticism,textual researches of literary allusions and characters,being fairly rich and heterogeneous in content.The circulation of this book was not extensive in history and it was also rarely quoted in cultural heritage data.Additionally,the information available on the author Wu Yu is quite sparse.Due to reasons mentioned above,a comprehensive study on this book still remains to be put forward.Based on thoroughly close reading of Guan Lin Poetry Notes,this paper summarizes and analyzes its poetic theory from perspectives of creation theory,writer theory and prosody.This paper also analyses the textual research of Guan Lin Poetry Notes,checks and corrects some errors of it.Both values and limitations of the book in its poetic theory and historical documents are objectively evaluated in the background of the creation peak of poetry talks between Northern Song Dynasty and Southern Song Dynasty.The research background,the object of study as well as the research methods of this paper is presented in the introduction part.Chapter one focuses on the name,the living period and the birthplace of Wu Yu,as well as the circulation of the text.It also reviews the historical and theoretical background of poetry notes in Song Dynasty.Chapter 2 analyzes the book's poetic theory and sum it up as two main points: first,the general aesthetic requirements in creation conclude emphasizing poetry's intention and conception,appreciating neat and delicacy works which are not flashy or vulgar in style.Second,specific to composing skills,the book mainly discusses poetry's rhymes,allusions and antithesis,suggesting that poetic language should be elegant but not vulgar,meanwhile holding that folk colloquialism and sayings can be used in poetry,or be processed into decorous phrases.Among numerous poets in Tang and Song dynasties,Du Mu,Wang Anshi,Su Shi,Huang Tingjian and Chen Shidao are most highly praised by Wu Yu,their works are particularly remarked in Guan Lin Poetry Notes.Chapter 3 focuses on the content of textual researches,relating to origins of allusions,objects and social systems and anecdotes of poetry.These were elucidated by Wu Yu using methods such as documentary investigation,deduction from styles and drawing inferences about poetry meanings according to words and phrases.The last part of this paper generally assesses values and limitations of Guan Lin Poetry Notes,concluding that the book is still categorized as the type of poetry notes which mainly consist of casual talks and gossips,based on the grounds that the proportion of its content which mainly records anecdotes and textual researches is larger than the proportion of poetic criticism.Wu Yu's theory favors Yuan You Poetics,especially being deeply affected by Jiangxi Poetry School leaded by Huang Tingjian.On the other side,Wu Yu also promotes some ideas distinguished from Jiangxi Poetics,such as advocating natural styles,emphasizing the function of poetry which should reflect social realities and play a role of satire and admonition.Most of textual researches in Guan Lin Poetry Notes are well founded.The book records a large collection of historical documentation on anecdotes of poets and poems,which is extremely valuable to the study on creation of poetry notes between Northern Song Dynasty and Southern Song Dynasty.