Tang and Song Dynasties

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Tang and Song Dynasties Name Class Date China Literature Poems from the Tang and Song Dynasties ABOUT THE READING Poetry has been VOCABULARY created in China for more than 5,000 years. chasms deep gaps in the The first poems were songs. The Book of Songs, earth; gorges the earliest known collection of poems, was written on bamboo sticks around 600 b.c. TANG POETRY The Tang Dynasty (618–907) is often called the Golden Age of China. During this time, poetry flourished. Tang poems are considered the best classical poems in China’s two-thousand-year literary history. As you read the poems below, pay attention to the simplicity of the language and the poems’ imagery. Moon When I was little I thought the moon was a white jade plate, Or maybe a mirror in Heaven Flying through the blue clouds. Li Bai is generally considered —Li Bai China’s single best poet. The moon was one of his favorite subjects. Climbing Stork Tower The white sun sinks behind the hills, The Yellow River rushes to the sea. This poem is often recited to encourage Chinese children to try Want to see a thousand miles further? harder and accomplish more in life. Let’s climb a little higher! —Wang Zhi-Huan “Moon” by Li Bai and “Climbing Stork Tower” by Wwang Zhi-Huan from Maples in the Mist, translated by Minfong Ho, illustrated by Jean & Mou-sien Tseng. Copyright © 1996 by Minfong Ho. Reproduced by permission of McIntosh and Otis, Inc. Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved. 13 China 6635_MS_iteratre_Ch0.indd3#5_MS(_)iterat/re_Ch03.indd 1313 3/11/06/11/06 44:3:54:3#:54 PMPM Name Class Date Poems from the Tang and Song Dynasties, continued Literature SONG POETRY The Song Dynasty (960–1279) was notable for the growth of the cities and the spread of printing and edu- cation. Printing provided a much wider access to books since manuscripts no longer had to be copied by hand. As you read the poems below, pay attention to how the poets describe their surroundings. Storm at Lakeview Tower Splattering mountains, ink-black clouds sweep by. This poem is tied to the irrigation Bouncing on boats, pearl white raindrops fly. and flood control measures carried out during the first century of the Rolling around the earth, wind scatters clouds Song dynasty. until, under Lakeview Tower, water is sky. —Su Shi Lodging in the Monk’s Hut Clouds drift inside my pillow on the air of a thousand peaks. Under my bed, pines moan as if ten thousand The temple described in this chasms sigh. poem was located near the river To see sky-high waves lap a silver mountain, Zheng. There were no mountains or chasms there, but the sounds of I open the window and let the great river by. the river and the wind made the poet imagine them. —Zeng Gongliang “Storm at Lakeview Tower” by Su Shi and “Lodging in the Monk’s Hut” by Zeng Gongliang from A Thousand Peaks: Poems from China by Siyu Liu and Orel Protopopsescu, illustrated by Siyu Liu. Copyright © 2002 by Orel Protopopescu and Siyu Liu; translation copyright © 2002 by Orel Protopopsescu and Siyu Liu. Reproduced by permission of Pacific View Press. ANALYZING LITERATURE 1. Main Idea What is the recurring theme of the poems? 2. Critical Thinking: Drawing Conclusions How does the poem “Climbing Stork Tower” teach ambition to young people? 3. Activity In China, poets were often artists and inscribed the poems on paintings on silk scrolls. Select a poem from the Song or Tang dynasty and draw a picture about it on a long scroll. Use calligraphy to write the poem on the scroll. Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved. 14 China 6695_MSH_ieae_Ch07.indd"95_MSH_)i+e-a+/-e_Ch07.indd 119 77/11/06/11/06 9:0:10:90:10 PMPM.
Recommended publications
  • Downloaded 4.0 License
    86 Chapter 3 Chapter 3 Eloquent Stones Of the critical discourses that this book has examined, one feature is that works of art are readily compared to natural forms of beauty: bird song, a gush- ing river or reflections in water are such examples. Underlying such rhetorical devices is an ideal of art as non-art, namely that the work of art should appear so artless that it seems to have been made by nature in its spontaneous process of creation. Nature serves as the archetype (das Vorbild) of art. At the same time, the Song Dynasty also saw refined objects – such as flowers, tea or rocks – increasingly aestheticised, collected, classified, described, ranked and com- moditised. Works of connoisseurship on art or natural objects prospered alike. The hundred-some pu 譜 or lu 錄 works listed in the literature catalogue in the History of the Song (“Yiwenzhi” in Songshi 宋史 · 藝文志) are evenly divided between those on manmade and those on natural objects.1 Through such dis- cursive transformation, ‘natural beauty’ as a cultural construct curiously be- came the afterimage (das Nachbild) of art.2 In other words, when nature appears as the ideal of art, at the same time it discovers itself to be reshaped according to the image of art. As a case study of Song nature aesthetics, this chapter explores the multiple dimensions of meaning invested in Su Shi’s connoisseur discourse on rocks. Su Shi professed to be a rock lover. Throughout his life, he collected inkstones, garden rocks and simple pebbles. We are told, for instance, that a pair of rocks, called Qiuchi 仇池, accompanied him through his exiles to remote Huizhou and Hainan, even though most of his family members were left behind.
    [Show full text]
  • The Poetic Theory and Practice of Huang Tingjian
    THE POETIC THEORY AND PRACTICE OF HUANG TINGJIAN BY LIANG DU B.A., HUNAN NORMAL UNIVERSITY, 1982 THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS i IN THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of Asian Studies) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA JULY, 1991 (C) LIANG DU, 1991 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of ^,A-A! S>Tc/P>/gS The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada DE-6 (2/88) ABSTRACT Huang Tingjian ffKpK<1045-1105) is one of the most important poets of the Song Dynasty. He is often associated with his contemporary Su Shi|||^ , just as the Tang Dynasty's most important poets Du Fu and Li Bai ^ are linked. Huang founded the Jiangxi School which exerted 150 years of influence _ i upon the creative theory and practice of succeeding generations of poets. Huang is also one of the most controversial poets in Chinese history. His position in poetic history and the controversy surrounding him, make it worthwhile to analyze his poetic theory and practice.
    [Show full text]
  • Dissertation Section 1
    Elegies for Empire The Poetics of Memory in the Late Work of Du Fu (712-770) Gregory M. Patterson Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2013 ! 2013 Gregory M. Patterson All rights reserved ABSTRACT Elegies for Empire: The Poetics of Memory in the Late Work of Du Fu (712-770) Gregory M. Patterson This dissertation explores highly influential constructions of the past at a key turning point in Chinese history by mapping out what I term a poetics of memory in the more than four hundred poems written by Du Fu !" (712-770) during his two-year stay in the remote town of Kuizhou (modern Fengjie County #$%). A survivor of the catastrophic An Lushan rebellion (756-763), which transformed Tang Dynasty (618-906) politics and culture, Du Fu was among the first to write in the twilight of the Chinese medieval period. His most prescient anticipation of mid-Tang concerns was his restless preoccupation with memory and its mediations, which drove his prolific output in Kuizhou. For Du Fu, memory held the promise of salvaging and creatively reimagining personal, social, and cultural identities under conditions of displacement and sweeping social change. The poetics of his late work is characterized by an acute attentiveness to the material supports—monuments, rituals, images, and texts—that enabled and structured connections to the past. The organization of the study attempts to capture the range of Du Fu’s engagement with memory’s frameworks and media. It begins by examining commemorative poems that read Kuizhou’s historical memory in local landmarks, decoding and rhetorically emulating great deeds of classical exemplars.
    [Show full text]
  • Du Fu and Chinese Poetic Expression: How Politics, Nature, and Self Become One
    Portland State University PDXScholar Young Historians Conference Young Historians Conference 2019 May 1st, 10:30 AM - 11:45 AM Du Fu and Chinese Poetic Expression: How Politics, Nature, and Self Become One Binhnam Nguyen Grant High School Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/younghistorians Part of the Chinese Studies Commons, Intellectual History Commons, and the Poetry Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Nguyen, Binhnam, "Du Fu and Chinese Poetic Expression: How Politics, Nature, and Self Become One" (2019). Young Historians Conference. 18. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/younghistorians/2019/oralpres/18 This Event is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Young Historians Conference by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible: [email protected]. Du Fu and Chinese Poetic Expression: How Politics, Nature, and Self Become One Nam Nguyen PSU HST 105 1 May 2019 Nguyen 1 Born in 712 C.E., Du Fu is regarded as one of the most influential classical Chinese poets. He was born into an aristocratic family during the Tang Dynasty (618 – 917), but after the An Lushan Rebellion (755 – 763) reached the capital of Chang’an in 756 where he was living, he was forced to flee from the city with his family. The Tang Dynasty started out strong, flourishing politically, economically, and within the arts and literature, but the second half of its rule was littered with conflicts, having failed to recover from the damages done by the Rebellion.1 It was not until the latter half of Du’s life, during that period of dynastic wars and instability, that he began writing poetry.
    [Show full text]
  • Self and Society in Pre-Modern Chinese Literature
    Self and Society in Pre-modern Chinese Literature ASIA 3891: Special Topics Fall 2015 MWF 10:10-11:00 Buttrick Hall 250 Prof. Guojun Wang ([email protected]) Office Hours: MW 11:15-12:15 (and by appointment) (Prior knowledge of Chinese language or literature is NOT required) Course Description: How did traditional Chinese people think and write about their selves, society, state, and nature? How have these traditions sustained a millennia-long civilization? How is today’s China connected or severed from its past? And above all, how can we answer these questions through reading Chinese literature? This course is the first of two survey courses on Chinese literature from pre-dynastic to contemporary periods (the second one will be offered in 2016 spring). This ASIA 3891 Self and Society in Pre-modern Chinese Literature 2 course introduces the major intellectual traditions, literary texts, and authors in pre-modern China (ca. 17th century BCE to 13th century CE). The readings follow a chronological order, but in each period we focus on some particular themes about self and society. The central topics include the intersections between literature and history, religion, gender, urban life, and print culture. This introductory course will provide you with a firm grasp of Chinese literary tradition, and prepare you for further studies in Chinese literature and history. Through this course, you will be familiar with China’s intellectual traditions and literary history, hone the skills of close reading, and learn to think and write critically. Class meets three times a week. Each class meeting comprises a 30-minute lecture followed by a 20-minute discussion.
    [Show full text]
  • Analyzing Sentiment in Classical Chinese Poetry
    Analyzing Sentiment in Classical Chinese Poetry Yufang Hou Anette Frank Institute for Computational Linguistics, Heidelberg University, Germany (hou|frank)@cl.uni-heidelberg.de Abstract positive or negative) of textual elements in Tang poetry from a computational perspective. Specif- Although sentiment analysis in Chinese ically, we propose a novel graph-based method to social media has attracted a lot of in- create a sentiment lexicon for classical Chinese terest in recent years, it has been less poetry. Such a lexicon is a valuable resource for explored in traditional Chinese literature other computational research on classical Chinese (e.g., classical Chinese poetry) due to the poetry, such as semantic analysis (Lee and Tak- lack of sentiment lexicon resources. In sum, 2012) or poetry generation (He et al., 2012; this paper, we propose a weakly super- Zhang and Lapata, 2014). vised approach based on Weighted Person- Turney and Littman (2003) propose a PMI- alized PageRank (WPPR) to create a sen- based algorithm to estimate the semantic orien- timent lexicon for classical Chinese po- tation or polarity of a word. The semantic ori- etry. We evaluate our lexicon intrinsically entation of a given word is calculated by com- and extrinsically. We show that our graph- paring its similarity to positive reference words based approach outperforms a previous (e.g., excellent or beautiful) with its similarity to well-known PMI-based approach (Turney negative reference words (e.g., poor or bad). In- and Littman, 2003) on both evaluation set- stead of calculating the similarity between a given tings. On the basis of our sentiment lexi- word and each of the positive (negative) reference con, we analyze sentiment in the Complete words separately, we apply Weighted Personalized Anthology of Tang Poetry.
    [Show full text]
  • Michael Anthony Fuller
    Michael Anthony Fuller E-mail: [email protected] Education 1974-1983 Doctoral program in East Asian Languages and Literatures, Yale University, New Haven, CT. Degree granted, 1983. Dissertation Title: The Poetry of Su Shi (1037-1101) 1980-1981 Chinese language training program at the Inter-University Program, Taipei, Ta i w an. 1976-1978 Research student, Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan (Japanese Ministry of Education Scholarship Program). 1972-1974 Yale University. B.A., magna cum laude. Major: English Literature. 1969-1971 California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. Major: Biology and English Literature. Employment 2012-present Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures University of California, Irvine 1993-2012 Associate Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures University of California, Irvine 1992-1993 Assistant Professor, University of California, Irvine 1992 Visiting Assistant Professor, (Spring term) Bryn Mawr College 1990-1992 Computer Programmer, Copan Software, 14 Harvey Ave., Yardley, PA 19067 1984-1990 Assistant Professor of Chinese, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University. 1983-1984 Junior Programmer/Analyst, Computation Center, University of Chicago 1983 Visiting Instructor (Spring Quarter), Department of Oriental Languages, University of California at Berkeley Grants and Fellowships 2009-2010 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship 2009-2010 American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship Michael Anthony Fuller (2) 2004-2005 University of California President’s Research Fellowship in the Humanities 1995-1996 University of California President’s Research Fellowship in the Humanities 1995-1996 Chiang Ching-kuo/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowship for Chinese Studies (declined) 1981-1983 East Asian Prize Fellowship, Yale University.
    [Show full text]
  • Mingfei Qu" and the Poetics of Disagreement Author(S): Yang Xiaoshan Source: Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR), Vol
    Wang Anshi's "Mingfei qu" and the Poetics of Disagreement Author(s): Yang Xiaoshan Source: Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR), Vol. 29 (Dec., 2007), pp. 55- 84 Published by: Chinese Literature: essays, articles, reviews (CLEAR) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25478397 Accessed: 14-08-2017 01:58 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25478397?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Chinese Literature: essays, articles, reviews (CLEAR) is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) This content downloaded from 66.31.142.119 on Mon, 14 Aug 2017 01:58:38 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Wang Anshi's "Mingfei qu" and the Poetics of Disagreement Yang Xiaoshan University of Notre Dame This essay reconsiders the controversy surrounding Wang Anshi's two poems on the Wang Zhaojun legend in light of his deliberate use of unconventional rhetoric to shock and awe his audience, especially in poems dealing with historical subjects.
    [Show full text]
  • Course Form for PKU Summer School International 2020
    Peking University Summer School International 2020 Course Form for PKU Summer School International 2020 Classical Chinese Poetry Course Title 中国古典诗词 Teacher MEI Shenyou First day of classes June 29, 2020 Last day of classes July 24, 2020 Course Credit 2 credits Course Description Objective: As a time-honored genre, poetry enjoyed an unrivalled status in classical Chinese literature. This course offers a survey of classical Chinese poetry by studying its evolution from about the 11th century B.C to the 12th century AD, when poetry had almost passed the zenith of its development. We shall study its two major forms — Shi poetry & Ci poetry (song lyrics) — and examine their various modes by focusing on the most representative works in history, particularly by ten major poets, with due attention to their distinctive life experience and the cultural context of each poem. By the end of the term, students will be enabled to cultivate their capacity for independent appreciation and to catch a glimpse of the breadth, depth and wealth of classical Chinese poetry. Pre-requisites Some basic knowledge of Chinese is preferable, but not mandatory. Proceeding of the Course This is a lecture/seminar-combined class. On class days, when a new genre or poet is being introduced, I will introduce at the very beginning some relevant historical and cultural background information, followed by students’ discussion. Generally, we focus on one genre/poet for each session. All the study materials will be in English. I shall find the best translations available, sometimes along with the Chinese original and relevant audio readings.
    [Show full text]
  • Imagery of Female Daoists in Tang and Song Poetry
    Imagery of Female Daoists in Tang and Song Poetry by Yang Liu B.A. Changchun Normal University, 1985 M.A. Jilin University, 1994 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Asian Studies) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) April, 2011 © Yang Liu, 2011 Abstract This dissertation involves a literary study that aims to understand the lives of female Daoists who lived from the eighth to the twelfth centuries in China. Together with an examination of the various individual qualities manifested in their poetry, this study includes related historical background, biographical information and a discussion of the aspirations and cultural life of the female clergy. Unlike some of the previous scholarship that has examined Daoist deities and mythical figures described in hagiographical texts and literary creations, or on topics such as the Divine Mother of the West and miscellaneous goddesses and fairies, this work takes the perspective of examining female Daoists as historical persons who lived in real Daoist convents. As such, this work concentrates on the assorted images of female Daoists presented in their own poetic works, including those of Yu Xuanji, Li Ye, Yuan Chun, Cao Wenyi and Sun Bu-er. Furthermore, this thesis also examines poetic works about female Daoists written by male literati from both inside and outside the Daoist religion. I do this in order to illustrate how elite men, the group with whom female Daoists interacted most frequently, appreciated and portrayed these special women and their poetry. I believe that a study of their works on Daoist women will not only allow us a better understanding of the nature and characters of female Daoists, but will also contribute to our knowledge of intellectual life in Tang and Song society.
    [Show full text]
  • Southern Song Dynasty Poetry and the Problem of Literary History
    《中國文化研究所學報》 Journal of Chinese Studies No. 66 – January 2018 Book Reviews 229 Drifting among Rivers and Lakes: Southern Song Dynasty Poetry and the Problem of Literary History. By Michael A. Fuller. Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Asia Center, 2013. Pp. xi + 526. $59.95/£47.95.* Every society has its cultural bogeymen: some of these begin as the self-appointed watchdogs of the public good, and, acting from the best motives, end up the sworn enemies of creative freedom. The English have their Puritans, who closed the the- atres and banned Shakespeare’s plays. For the Chinese, it is the Confucian pedant, particularly in his incarnation of “Daoxue scholar” 道學先生—the dedicated partisan of the fundamentalist wing in Confucian thought known as “the Learning of the Way”—whose very name conjures a stuffy old man with an inveterate prejudice against new ideas and pleasurable activities, but most of all against the writing of poetry. As schoolchildren, we followed with dismay Daoxue’s slow but ineluctable climb to ascendancy in the Southern Song, and sympathized heartily with the poets whose work came under fire as being antithetical to the pursuit of Daoxue goals. In the grown-up version of the same picture, the interchanges between the practitioners of Daoxue and poetry are, of course, more layered and complex, but in some ways perhaps even more depressing. We discover, for example, that the attack on poetry in the Southern Song came from many sides, or, to put it more precisely, that, from the late Northern Song onwards, many factors arose to militate against the continued flowering of poetry.
    [Show full text]
  • Chan Buddhism in Literati Culture During the Song Dynasty Qing MING Yunnan Normal University, Kunming, Yunnan, China [email protected]
    2017 3rd Annual International Conference on Modern Education and Social Science (MESS 2017) ISBN: 978-1-60595-450-9 Chan Buddhism in Literati Culture During the Song Dynasty Qing MING Yunnan Normal University, Kunming, Yunnan, China [email protected] Keywords: Chan Buddhism, literati, Tea Ceremony, Calligraphy. Abstract: Chan Buddhism had become a reinvented popular Buddhist school of the Song dynasty, and it had also integrated with the indigenous culture of Song China. It had become an inseparable part of the indigenous Song culture of China and had exerted direct or indirect influence upon Chinese culture and even the mentality of most of the Chinese population.Thus, this paper taken Chan Buddhism in Song dynasty literati’s culture as its objects of research; in the paper, the research will be approached by focusing on four aspects: 1) the tea ceremony (chadao), 2) Chan poetry, 3) Chan painting, and 4) the art of calligraphy (shufa yishu). Introduction “Chan” is known as “dhyāna” in Sanskrit. It means meditation, which was the basic practice of early Buddhism and the Indian Yoga tradition. The aim of Chan is to realize the basic nature of enlightenment in sentient beings through direct experience and insight into the true nature of things. During the Song dynasty, Chan Buddhism had great influence upon the cultural activities of the literati, which included the Tea Ceremony (chadao), Chan Poetry, Chan Painting and the Art of Calligraphy (shufa yishu), etc. 1. The Tea Ceremony (Chadao) The tea ceremony’s art of drinking tea takes self-development and realizing the Chan as its purpose.
    [Show full text]