On Wen T'ing-yun, a T'ang Poet

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  • 溫飛卿の文學
  • オンヒキョウ ノ ブンガク
  • 温飛卿の文学

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Abstract

Wen T'ing-Yün 溫庭筠 (ca. 812-870) has been held in less esteem than his rival Li Shang-yin 李商隱. To the author of this article, however, he seems to be the poet who epitomizes the spirit of the final period of the T'ang dynasty. His preference was for the fluent seven-word line, especially as employed in longer ballads, and it was a genre which enabled him to display his great rhetorical powers. Decadent beauty was his favorite subject. His was an aesthetic nature, keen and able, as evidenced by several instances of unorthodox behavior in the examination hall which brought him unhappiness and despair. It was the combination of aestheticism and despair which led him, alone of all T'ang poets, to the writing of tz'u. According to recent research, tz'u patterns did not derive from chüeh-chü and first appear in the later T'ang, as scholars previously supposed. Actually, they existed from the earliest period of T'ang, but men of letters hesitated to use them. With the exception of Wen T'ing-yün, no one overcame this hesitation, and he is remembered as the most brilliant exponent of this form throughout the entire history of tz'u. He was at one and the same time a poet of decadence and a literary pioneer.

Journal

  • 中國文學報

    中國文學報 5 19-40, 1956-10

    DEPARTMENT OF CHINESE LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, FACULTY OF LETTERS, KYOTO UNIVERSITY

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