回复: [急]怎么样才能提高英语写作??
这点我们老师倒是强调过的..比如GONNA...就不能用
我以前写的SUMMARY
Stephen Owen's "The Poetry of the Early T'ang (1977)"
In this essay, I will review the main viewpoints of the book " The Poetry of
the Early Tang" written by Stephen Owen. These main viewpoints are court
poetry, its opposition poetics, and important poets of the Early Tang. In the
end of this report, the summary and the arguments will be given.
Stephen Owen's "The Poetry of the Early T'ang (1977)"chronologically,
systematically studied the whole poetry of the Early Tang. He solved the
following problems:
What process was that the Regulated Verse, as Recent Style Poem, was
formulated and gradually became a unified style? Why the "old style" poem,
especially seven characters old style poem, became popular in High Tang and
Middle Tang and evolved into fixed style away from court poetry through
numerous tries and considerable reforms by the Early Tang poets? What kind of
the historical positions have the Early Tang's poets such as the Four Talents
of the Early Tang, Chen Tze-ang, Tu shen-yen, Shen Chuan-chi, and Sung Chih-
wen? What characteristics are there in Court Poetry and its opposition
poetics?
What is court poetry?
Court poetry is the poetry referred to later Southern Dynasties, Sui, and
Early Tang (page 1). Court poetry mainly has two styles. One is the imitation
of folk lyrics, Yuefu. The other is the formal occasional poem (page5). Court
poetry has the following characteristics and conventions (page 5-13):
¤ Basic, prearranged themes and forms set by court
¤ Gracious adornments
¤ Creative imitation
¤ Novelty of expression
¤ Fixed structural conventions
¤ Of rules of rhetoric and decorum
¤ Lexical decorum
¤ Recurring elegant terms
¤ Each sub-genre with its own conventions
¤ Tripartite form
¤ Parallel couplet
The last two characteristics are the most important techniques in court
poetry. "Tripartite form" consists of three parts, respectively topic,
descriptive amplification, and response (page 234).
Usually a poet begins his poem with gracious statement as possible as he can.
Then he amplifies the theme with two or more descriptive parallel couplets in
the middle of the poem. In the end of the poem, the poet always sends the
messages of personal reaction to the scene. These messages can be a witty
compliment, an intrusion of personal opinion, some observation, some witty
idea, or emotion and sentiment. Court poetry dominated the whole early Tang.
The forms, themes, and stylistic conventions were taken by many great poets of
the eighth and ninth centuries. While the clearest picture was reflected from
the last year of Empress Wu's region and from the second reigns of Chung-Tsung
and Jui-Tsung, because more materials including poems, complete poem series
and anecdotes were survived than those of other reigns. So the forms, genres
and sub-genres of writing a court poem were clearly mirrored from the picture
of courtly style composition from the beginning of the year 708 to next two
decades (page 234). As mentioned above, The fixed technique to compose a court
poem is to use the " Tripartite Form". The conventions including "Tripartite
Form" contributed to the formation of the regulated verse, Lu shi, basically
combing the very common eight-line poem, certain rules of tonal decorum, and
the tripartite form (page 235).
Other early poetry that ignored its proprieties or avoided them, associated
with the pre-southern Dynasties style, developed into " old style poetry", Gu-
Shi. The tripartite form was widely used in both regulated verse, Lu-shi,
and "old style poetry", Gu-shi .(page 236) Although some great poets such as
Chen Ziang tried to use different structural principles in poems, most other
poets unavoidably manipulated the structure for their own purposes. In a word,
the "tripartite form" is the most essential part in the poetry of Early Tang.
The other technique is the parallel couplet that is very useful for courtier
who is required impromptu to compose a poem if he masters it effectively (page
238-246). Certain changes and developments to the style of the High Tang can
be seen from the intrusion of individuality into court poetry and the broken
of rigid codes of decorum and normative conventions of earlier court poetry
during the period of Empress Wu's reign and her successor's reigns. The amount
of personal poetry and informal occasional poetry increased although court
poems and formal occasional poems still dominated the period ( Part 4,the
court poets of empress Wu and Chung-Tsung 680-710,page 224-380).There are
numerous court poets in the Early Tang. Only a few of them survived their
poems. The representatives are Shang-Kuanyi (page page 72), Tu shen-yen (page
325), Sung Chih-wen (page 364), and Shen Chuan-chi (page 334). The later two
poets contributed to the perfection of the regulated verse (page 334&364 ).The
topics of court poetry cover many aspects of the life of the court, private
banquet, " poetry on things", parting poem, verse letters including travel
poems, and new songs (page 256-324).
What is opposition poetics?
The opposition poetics, as the immediate reaction to the court poetry, has
different definitions to different people. Unfortunately, it has only theory
lack of practice. In some extent, it is a kind of "fu-ku", "return to
antiquity". It strongly rejects those poems lack of directness and concision,
political import, morality. In short, it opposes all characteristics of the
court poetry (page 14). Thus, the " opposition poetics" is not completely the
return to antiquity although sometimes it implies the meaning in some cases.
The representative literal theory works of the opposition poetics are "Wen-hsin
Tiao-Lung" by Liu Hsieh (page 15) and " Essay on Insect Carving " by Pei Tze-
yeh (page 16).The representative poets who use their own special structural
principles and styles to compose poems are Sui Wen-Ti (page 16) and his son Sui
Yang-Ti (page 20), Wei Zheng, Li Pai-Yao (page 27-41), Wang Chi (page 61-71).
However, the great literary reformation away from the court poetry, began in
the year 661 (page 80). The four talents of Early Tang played very important
role in departure from the courtly style, although they still composed lots of
court poetry. They respectively created their own styles. Strictly speaking,
Yang Chiung never really formed his own style and could not be regarded as the
reformer of the courtly style (page 81), although later people classified them
as a homogeneous family. Chen Tze-ang (661-702) is regarded as the first
conqueror of the court poetry (page 153). He encouraged directness and
concision, admired elegance and "Bi-xing", rejected completely soft, erotic and
over decorum style of the Six-Dynasties, and interested in restoring to the
style of Han and Wei (Fu-Gu). His poetry was united with plentiful contents and
straight forms. His verses were full of directness and concision. He stressed
social, political, and practical meanings of the reality. Therefore, he is
esteemed as the forerunner of the reformation of the Early Tang (part Three:
Chen Tze-ang, page 151-223).
The summary and arguments:
The book gives us the whole picture of the poetry of Early Tang. The
conventions of the poetry of the Early Tang provides poets in High Tang with a
set of composition skills and forms. The poets of the High Tang increased
their individuality and other structural principles. Although there are
difference between the two periods, no evidence shows absolute isolation
existing between them. In contrast, most poets in High Tang inherited the
composition techniques of the Early Tang and developed these skills for their
own purposes. The history of the poetry of the Early Tang to High Tang can be
referred to the process of the topic from " Court" to " Popular". After the
court poetry achieved the summit of the poetry development through the
evolution from Southern Dynasties to Early Tang, people tried to develop new
style to express broader topics and wider sub genres. I will argue here,
besides the development of the literary and poets, politics, economy,
military, and other Asian culture import might produce some influence on the
change of the poetry of Early Tang to High Tang. This assumption perhaps could
be demonstrated by studying the history and other relative materials if we
have time to do it.
