Abstract
Everything in this world has the problem of name and essence, and "the poetic history" is no exception. The truth of poetic history has already existed since the beginning of humanity, and its name is not created by Meng Qi, the author of "Poetry of Anecdotes". Like the ancients, who attempted to explain the original meaning of Meng Qi's words, we just add one more understanding on the previous interpretations. Before or after this, people have a variety of explanations, either conducting literary criticism in the name of "poetic history" or holding fundamental opposition to this concept. Both have their own reasons and also make contributions to literary studies, so it may not be necessary to favor one or the other. Today, besides teasing out the interpretative history of "poetic history",we should base ourselves on the history of Chinese literature, especially on the abundant practical experiences of poetic history. And then scholars can aim to explore its possible implications, interpreting it in a modern way. Besides, we need to link the poetic narrative history with the narrative tradition to make a thorough understanding of the main features and connotations of the narrative tradition of Chinese poetry. Then it clearly outlines the penetration of the two great traditions of narration and lyric in the history of Chinese literature, aiming to decipher the dominate notion of "lyric tradition". It can be regarded as a feasible aspect to continue classical literature research. The "poetic history" is a simple concept but has complicated implications: it is only an evaluation metric for great poetry, but not the only standard. Although we have multiple understandings of the "poetic history", it is generally similar to each other, whether other scholars agree or not, we should make our judgement without insisting on consistency.
First Page
82
Last Page
94
Recommended Citation
Dong, Naibin. 2019. "From the Name and Essence of Poetic History to the Narrative Tradition." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 39, (1): pp.82-94. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol39/iss1/4
