Tales, Allusions and Poetry: From a Line on Unorthodox Allusion in Yuan Haowen's Thirty Poems on Poetry

Authors

Ning Luo Luo Ning, Ph.D., is a professor in the School of Humanities, Southwest Jiaotong University. His research interests include the literature from the Han to the Song dynasties.Follow

Abstract

Yuan Haowen's Thirty Poems on Poetry was an important work of pre-modern Chinese literary theory. However, a line from the 23^rd poem, which reads “unorthodox learning and tales are deceiving”, has received scant commentary and discussion in existing scholarship. Most works on the history of Chinese literary criticism have also overlooked this line. In fact, the line addresses the use of allusion in the poems of Song poets like Su Shi and Huang Tingjian. The erudite scholars and poets of the Song dynasty were inclined to engage extensively with tales and favored emplying unconventional allusions in their poems. Consequently, tales and unorthodox learning became significant sources of poetic allusion, a trend notably exemplified by Su Shi and Huang Tingjian. However, during the Southern Song and Jin dynasties, scholars like Yuan Haowen began to critique this stylistic approach.

Keywords

tale (xiaoshuo), allusion (diangu), Yuan Haowen, Song-dynasty poetry, unorthodox learning (quxue)

First Page

49

Last Page

60

Recommended Citation

Luo, Ning. 2024. "Tales, Allusions and Poetry: From a Line on Unorthodox Allusion in Yuan Haowen's Thirty Poems on Poetry." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 43, (6): pp.49-60. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol43/iss6/7