Abstract
Huang Tingjian engaged in a spiritual dialogue with Tao Yuanming on themes such as praising Tao's loyalty, contentment in poverty, and self-cultivation of the mind and character. His profound experience of reading Tao Yuanming's poetry left a deep imprint on both his poetic theory and his creative compositions. Huang Tingjian's criticism of Tao Yuanming's poetry emphasized the poet's inner subjective realm and the reader's responses. This impressionistic criticism crystallized into the poetics of qingxing (emotion-nature) in his later years. The core of this theory lies in poetry's fenghua (transformative) function: the poet alleviates sorrow and manifests his temperament through verse, while the reader gains moral encouragement by interpreting the poet's intent through the text. Regarding creative practice, the travel poetry of both figures frequently revisits the motif of “returning” as a signifier of a spirit liberated from secular shackles. By juxtaposing environmental flux with an unwavering internal constancy, both poets effectively articulate a distant spiritual realm. Ultimately, their shared philosophy of yielding to transformation is anchored in a refined unworldliness, which ensures that such resignation does not devolve into passive conformity with the world.
Keywords
Huang Tingjian, Tao Yuanming, poetics of qingxing, unworldliness and yielding to transformation
First Page
171
Last Page
183
Recommended Citation
Cheng, Shangyun. 2026. "Huang Tingjian's Poetic Practice of Learning from Tao Yuanming." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 46, (1): pp.171-183. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol46/iss1/17
