A Study Of Xu Youren’s Poetry

The literature of the Yuan Dynasty was prosperous,not only the popular literature such as Zaju and Sanqu gradually rose,but also the orthodox poetry.Xu Youren promoted Yanyou Gao Ke to the study of the classics,becoming the only Han scholar who was honored by the imperial examination in the Yuan Dynasty.His article was famous and was called a famous minister of the generation,but this also caused the academic circle to pay too much attention to his identity as a politician and ignored his contribution to the Yuan literature.Throughout the literary circle of the Yuan Dynasty,Xu Youren’s literary creation has distinct characteristics of The Times,especially his poetry,which profoundly reflects the creation pomp of the poetry circle and the track of the gradual change of poetic style after the restoration of the imperial examination by Yanyou in the Yuan Dynasty.Therefore,studying Xu Youren’s poetry has a significance that cannot be ignored to peep into the face of Yuan poetry.This thesis will take Xu Youren’s poetry works as the main research object,and grasp the overall style of his poetry on the basis of in-depth interpretation of his life,social history and poetic thoughts,so as to conduct a comprehensive and detailed investigation of his poetic creation and poetic features.One feature of Xu Youren’s poetry is to record his life collection in the form of poetry,so this paper intends to explore his life experience from the perspective of poetry,and investigate the poetry style and mood of Xu Youren in different life stages.Based on this,the author divides the life of his poems into four parts: "young study period","study period","conflict period" and "retirement period".In addition,Xu Youren’s poems reveal the information of his interactions with people from all walks of life in the society at that time.This paper intends to combine his poems with his texts to investigate his interactions with Confucian scholars of Han ethnic group,Mongolians,shamans,Taoist priests and monks serving for the Yuan regime.Through the analysis of Xu Youren’s extensive interactions,the inclusiveness of his poems is investigated.Secondly,Xu Youren’s poetics both inherited and innovated the "Zong Tang and Gu" poetics view in the middle and late Yuan Dynasty.On the one hand,he advocates the retro and elegant style of poetry,on the other hand,he advocates getting rid of the shackles when writing poems,not being restricted by time and place,emphasizing "heart poetry".Xu Youren’s poems are rich in content,including landscape poems,responsivative poems,singing and painting poems,and other poems created by previous poets.In these poems,the landscapes of the south and the north are described in them.Based on the vertical and horizontal analysis of his poem content,this paper plans to divide his poems into four categories: the first category is the realm of benevolence of a Confucian to express the sufferings of the people;the second category is the realm of Xu Youren to express himself as an official;the third category is full of warmth.It is a realm of friends and relatives,landscape swimming,and the last category is the presentation of Xu Youren’s leisure and elegant interest.Xu Youren’s poems have a variety of topics,including ancient poems,regular poems,quatrains and even a small amount of four-character poems.The ancient poetry reflects the mellow and simple style of the north poetry,while the rhythmic poetry has the characteristics of the Jiangxi poetry school in the south.In the study of the previous generation of poets,Xu Youren’s poems can be transferred to many teachers and become a family of his own.There are Tao Yuanming’s real chun in his recumbent poems,Du Fu’s poems that reflect the suffering of people’s lives,and Li Bai’s fortitude in some of his poems that depict scenery and wine.From the perspective of language,his poems are plain and simple,showing the elegance of the northern Confucian scholars.He seldom uses the classics,even if he does,the poems are easy to understand.From the perspective of artistic conception Chung Rong’s bright images lead to the broad artistic conception of his poems.In addition,his poems are more about the expression of the emotions of the subject,and the self-consciousness in the poems is very obvious.Xu Youren’s poems reflect the characteristics of the mixing of the northern and southern styles of poetry,which is a model of the mixing of the northern and southern styles of poetry in the Yuan Dynasty.Taking a survey of the Yuan poetry circle,mixing of the northern and southern styles of poetry is the most prominent literary value and feature of his poems.Moreover,the Guitang Yaji and Guitang singing and harmony led by Xu Youren in his later years are not only the imitation of the romantic Wei and Jin dynasties on the surface,but also have profound cultural connotation,which is another way of retirement.In this literary activity,Xu Youren made a witty interpretation of the secluded world in Guitang through his poetry creation,which indirectly expanded his influence as a poet at that time.