Tang Poetry

Tang Poetry
Tang Dynasty (618-907)
  * A high point of Chinese civilization
  * Capital Chang’an: the largest cosmopolitan city
  * City divided by squares, very orderly
Tang Poetry
  * Pinnacle of the Chinese literary tradition
  * Set the model that the tradition never felt it surpassed
Poetry of regulation
  * New style poems (regulated verse)
  * Parallelism: “in a parallel couplet, not only must the syntax, tonal pattern, and content but the aesthetic and philosophical allusions, be all separately matched and balanced
      * Yin-yang concept
      * Li Bai: “Sending a Friend on his way”
        * Drifting clouds: the traveler’s thoughts; sinking sun: an old friend’s mood
        * Noun vs. noun, verb vs. verb
Poetry of Social Exchange
  * A social act
  * Occasions: visiting friends, parties, group excursion, parting
Poetry of persona
  * Poets wrote in the personas of people other than themselves
      * Li Bo “The river merchant’s wife: a letter” (pp.99)
        * Imagines a lonely merchant’s wife
      * Du Fu “Out to the Frontier” (pp.104)
        * The situation of a frontier soldier
Li Bai (Li Bo) 701-762
  * The Romantic Eccentric
  * The unconventional talent
      * Unbound by Confucian ideology
      * Known for his extravagant imagination
  * Topics of his poems
      * Taoist transcendence
      * Celebration of drinking
  * “Drinking Alone by Moonlight”
      * What’s the function of the moon?
      * What mood in conveyed?
Du Fu (712-770)
  * The Confucian Moralist
  * “Sage of Poetry”
      * concerned with morality and society at large
  * “Poet Historian”
      * famous for poems recounting his experiences during the social turmoil (A Lushan Rebellion 755)
  * “The View in Spring” (pg. 103)
      * A kingdom smashed, its hills and rivers still here, Spring in the city, plants and trees grow deep. [continues]

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