Ji Yun's Theoretical Construction in On the Tang-Dynasty Imperial Examination Poetry

Abstract

Abstract: In On the Tang-Dynasty Imperial Examination Poetry, Ji Yun's comments on the imperial examination poetry in the Tang Dynasty opened a scope wider than specific comments on specific time but became a theoretical study of the genre. For the imperial poetry, Ji Yun properly positioned its style, identifying its governing poetic rules along its unique features, while he also promoted its class and taste in terms of the poets’ personality and moral integrity as well as the sublimity of poetic language. He viewed the imperial examination poetry as an organism and made analogue between it and life by way of metaphors in hair, blood, bones, muscles, and spirit, thus constructed his theory of the genre. When commenting on the poems, Ji Yun elucidated different rules and methods of poetic composition, while also proposed non-rules, non-methods and non-style for the bad poems. However, it was his advocacy of poems with flexible use of the rules and non-rules, following nature and mastering the spirit instead of the skill that made his theorization of the imperial examination poetry worthwhile.

Key words: Ji Yun, On the Tang-Dynasty Imperial Examination Poetry, theoretical studies of the imperial examination poetry, positioning of poetry style, poetry order

Peng Guozhong. Ji Yun's Theoretical Construction in On the Tang-Dynasty Imperial Examination Poetry[J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2014, 34(5): 76-87.

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