Abstract
From a series of theoretical summaries based on creative practice, such as "expressing sentiment in response to objects or things", "revealing emotions in narratives" and "integration of emotions and things", it is easy to find that traditional Chinese poetics contains a set of combination of "emotion" and "things". The idea of "emotions arising from felt things" is deeply rooted in traditional Chinese poetics. Accordingly, scholars gradually realized that there should be "things" first, then "emotions". In other words, emotions are caused by things, and narratives are the basic and necessary means of lyric expression. Based on this, Wei Tai in the Song Dynasty put forward the idea of "presenting things to convey emotions" in his Lin Han Seclusion Poetry, which clarified narratives' subordination to lyricism. Later in the Ming Dynasty, with regard to the ecology of poetry underlined by "presenting things with sentiment", Kong Tianyin summarizes in his Tang Shi Chronicles Preface the idea of "integration of emotions and things", which revealed the secrets of Tang poetry and even entire ancient Chinese poetry. Of course, such important concepts as "artistic conception (yijing)" or "realm (jingjie)" that gradually developed in the history of traditional poetry theory were all imbued with the idea of "integration of emotions and things". Among them, "meaning (yi)" leaned towards lyricism and contained narrative factors, while "state (jing)" leaned towards narrative with elements of emotions.
First Page
142
Last Page
151
Recommended Citation
Li, Guikui. 2018. "The Combination of Emotions and Things in Traditional Chinese Poetics." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 38, (6): pp.142-151. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol38/iss6/14
