Pragmatics of the Study of Chinese Poetics (ePub)

The book's investigation of Chinese poetry is generally based on pragmatics. First it clarifies the antithesis of Substance and Utility in Chinese poetics. Poetry actually concentrates on syntax, while diction on word formation, the art of composition on the arrangement of lines, antithetical couplet on the coordination of two adjacent sentences, allusion on intertextuality, and adaptation on paraphrasing and appropriating poetic elements of previous poets. Hence poetics maintains that honing "e;prowess"e; should be aligned to the "e;naturalness"e; of the "e;poetic fundamentals"e;. The Substance-Utility thought pattern can be understood as the mutually supplementary relation between naturalness and prowess. As Chinese poems are structures composed of monosyllable characters, the rhythm and rhyme form stable four-, five- and seven-character lines. This is the formal representation of the pragmatics of Chinese poetry. The discussion of the sublime and elegant nature of poetry involves pragmatic concerns like set phrase, melonymy, allusion and adaptation. The thought pattern of analogy, the use of comparison and affective image, the taxonomy of antithetical parallelism and the intertextuality of literature of the past and the present in the form of allusions all place stress on pragmatism. The nebulous and cryptic poetic conception is efficacious only with formal restrictions, especially the "e;expressive expansion"e; between sentences and in terms of composition. Study of individual poems like the relationship between Yuefu and Nineteen Old Poems also focuses on the emulation of patterns and styles. Even the thematic evolution of Yuefu poems like "e;Roadside Mulberry Tree"e; entails emulation of predecessors in order to be valid. Huang Tingjian's poetics and Song poetry criticism under its influence manifest the universality of pragmatics of poetry, which is epoch-making is the history of Chinese poetics, its influence deep and far-reaching. The "e;Song Poetry School"e; under Emperor Daoguang and Xianfeng's reign emulated Han Yu and Huang Tingjian, as response to the emphasis on pragmatics of Song poets. Cheng Enze, Zheng Zhen (from Guizhou) and Mo Youzhi all inherited the tradition of Han Yu who turned prose into poetry, as well as Song poets such as Huang Tingjian, who turned scholarly discussions and criticism into poetry, as manifested in the prosaic expressions and use of classics and arcane words, etc.