The father of Chinese landscape poetry in time and place

During the dark centuries between the fall of the Han dynasty in 220 CE and the golden age of reunified China under the Tang and Song dynasties (618-1279), the shi poetic form embraced new themes and structure. In this meticulously constructed study, Ping Wang traces the social conditions that sparked innovation and marked a significant turn in intellectual history. Using biography, social history, and literary analysis, she demonstrates how the shi form came to dominate classical Chinese poetry, making possible the works of the great poets of later dynasties and influencing literary development in Korea and Japan.

Focusing on the life of poet Xie Lingyun (385-433), she traces the exile of aristocratic families in the wild south, which led to their thematic use of "mountains and water" (shanshui) landscapes over the pastoral ones of earlier writers and artists. Changes in poetic form moved away from genres associated with aggrandizement of the imperial court and, through innovative use of meter and syntax, created a new style of varied, fluid cadence. In Xie's redesigned five-syllable-line poetry, couplets balanced contradictions that the poet used to capture principles of the natural world.

Wang shows how this literary form enabled exiled scholars to make meaning of their tentative existence in the southland, in which the mountains and water imaged the yin-yang principle underlying existence. The post-Han intelligentsia thus used the dilemma of southern exile to craft literature that was revolutionary in both content and form.

About the Author

Ping Wang is professor of Asian languages at the University of Washington. She is author of The Age of Courtly Writing: Wen xuan Compiler Xiao Tong (501-531) and His Circle.

Book Information
ISBN 9780295753737
Author Ping Wang
Format Paperback
Page Count 300
Imprint University of Washington Press
Publisher University of Washington Press