Poetics and poetry of Jing school = Jing pai shi ge li lun ji chuang zuo

Abstract

The thesis was an in-depth study of the poetics and poetry of Jing School京派in modern Chinese literature. Jing School was a loosely formed but comprehensive and influential literary school emerged in Beijing in the early 1930s. It was an all-round literary school, which produced almost all kinds of literary works, including literary critic, fiction, prose, drama and poetry. However, only few studies focused on its achievements in the field of poetry. This study was undertaken to provide some insights into the poetic nature of Jing School and its contributions to the development of modern Chinese poetry. Unlike the Leftist and Right-wing writers in the same period, poets of Jing School persisted in composing pure poetry, which was advocated by the French symbolists. However, it was also the main aesthetic feature of traditional Chinese poetry, especially the poetry in the late Tang period. In this way, poets of Jing School successfully integrated the modern techniques and ideas employed in the western symbolist poetry, such as symbols, metaphors and synaesthesia, with those traditional artistic conceptions used in classical Chinese poetry. As a result, their works stayed away from political topics and emphasized on literary techniques. Together with poetry of other literary schools, they thereby created the golden age of modern Chinese poetry in the mid-1930s. To fully explicate the poetic nature of Jing School, the first chapter of the thesis reconstructed the background, the memberships as well as the literary pursuits of Jing School by analysing their publications on journals and supplements of newspapers that edited by Jing School members. The literary salons held by inspiring leaders of Jing School, Zhu Guangqian 朱光潛 and Lin Huiyin 林徽因 had also been re-examined. The following two chapters looked into the characteristics and significances of poetry and poetics of Jing School respectively. Poems of Feiming 廢名 and Bian Zhilin 卞之琳, poetics of Zhu Guangqian, Liang Zongdai 梁宗岱, Feiming and Lin Gen 林庚 have been taken as examples for further exploration of the aesthetic pursuits of Jing School. The last chapter proceeded to examine the fate of Jing School during and after the Anti-Japanese War (1937-1945). During the war time, some poets of Jing School shifted their lyrical writing style to realistic and political writing style. Among them, He Qifang 何其芳 was the most prominent figure and his case has been studied thoroughly in this chapter. Besides, the decline of the aesthetic pursuits of Jing School has also been reflected in the failure of resuming the publication of Wenxue Zazhi 文學雜誌, the most important journal of Jing School, after the victory. In short, the most distinguished feature of the poetics and poetry of Jing School was the flawless integration of the essence of western modernity and that of Chinese tradition. The significance of the integration and the controversial issues aroused by this aesthetic pursuit have been scrutinized and summarized in the concluding chapter.