This essay explores the poetic responses of several Qing-dynasty poets to their encounter with Western-style oil painting. Unfamiliar with Western post-Renaissance techniques, most notably the use of perspective and o...This essay explores the poetic responses of several Qing-dynasty poets to their encounter with Western-style oil painting. Unfamiliar with Western post-Renaissance techniques, most notably the use of perspective and of oil paints, these poets expressed their anxiety, distaste, curiosity and appreciation of Western aesthetics and cultural practices through their poems. By focusing on previously un-translated poems of Weng Fanggang 翁方纲 （1733-1818）, Li Xialing 李遐龄 （1768-1832）, Kang Youwei 康有为 （1858-1927） and others, I argue that these poems function as metaphors for the complex ways in which China＇s late imperial elites negotiated their country＇s encounter with the West, both as a tight-knit group bound by dynastic conventions and as a loose network of individual thinkers whose varied talents allowed for highly original reflections on the cultural potential of East-West encounters. I will show that--while strictly adhering to traditional Chinese prosodic conventions--these poets through their creative and nuanced poetic commentaries on Sino-Western relations achieved an unusual degree of cultural cross-fertilization. Intrigued by the ＂foreignness＂ of the art works they set their eyes on, these poets, I will illustrate, were able to expand the horizons of poetic discourse without surrendering to the lure of the foreign or abandoning indigenous formal conventions.展开更多
The study about the school of Guan Zhong" has been paid much attention to in the field of the history of Idea, but not to the filed of literature study. Li Yindu, who lived in the region of Guan Zhong (the centra...The study about the school of Guan Zhong" has been paid much attention to in the field of the history of Idea, but not to the filed of literature study. Li Yindu, who lived in the region of Guan Zhong (the central Shanxi plain), was a famous poet and an expert in poetics in the early Qing Dynasty. His woks on poetics, which is based on the position of school of artistic style, was in response to the poetry in Song style in the reign of Emperor Kang Xi, and initiated a new approach of study of Chinese poetry. His study on poetic rhyme created a separate school in that time and had effect on Gu Yan wu who happened to stay in Guan Zhong. Especially, his study on Tang Poetry rhyme and Du Fu’s poems illuminated the scholars in Poetics in his time and after.展开更多
文摘This essay explores the poetic responses of several Qing-dynasty poets to their encounter with Western-style oil painting. Unfamiliar with Western post-Renaissance techniques, most notably the use of perspective and of oil paints, these poets expressed their anxiety, distaste, curiosity and appreciation of Western aesthetics and cultural practices through their poems. By focusing on previously un-translated poems of Weng Fanggang 翁方纲 （1733-1818）, Li Xialing 李遐龄 （1768-1832）, Kang Youwei 康有为 （1858-1927） and others, I argue that these poems function as metaphors for the complex ways in which China＇s late imperial elites negotiated their country＇s encounter with the West, both as a tight-knit group bound by dynastic conventions and as a loose network of individual thinkers whose varied talents allowed for highly original reflections on the cultural potential of East-West encounters. I will show that--while strictly adhering to traditional Chinese prosodic conventions--these poets through their creative and nuanced poetic commentaries on Sino-Western relations achieved an unusual degree of cultural cross-fertilization. Intrigued by the ＂foreignness＂ of the art works they set their eyes on, these poets, I will illustrate, were able to expand the horizons of poetic discourse without surrendering to the lure of the foreign or abandoning indigenous formal conventions.
文摘The study about the school of Guan Zhong" has been paid much attention to in the field of the history of Idea, but not to the filed of literature study. Li Yindu, who lived in the region of Guan Zhong (the central Shanxi plain), was a famous poet and an expert in poetics in the early Qing Dynasty. His woks on poetics, which is based on the position of school of artistic style, was in response to the poetry in Song style in the reign of Emperor Kang Xi, and initiated a new approach of study of Chinese poetry. His study on poetic rhyme created a separate school in that time and had effect on Gu Yan wu who happened to stay in Guan Zhong. Especially, his study on Tang Poetry rhyme and Du Fu’s poems illuminated the scholars in Poetics in his time and after.
