Research on the Debates over Poetry and Prose in the Ming Dynasty

Author: Feng Xiaolu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-07-01
Features: Due to a lack of confidence in my knowledge of Yuan, Ming, and Qing literature, I had to find relevant materials to "cram" for my doctoral entrance exams. One of them was the "History of Qing Literature Criticism" written by the Japanese person, Aoki Shigeru. It contained many materials where Qing people criticized Ming people, and Qing people criticized each other, which was incredibly satisfying. Especially the extremely violent and aggressive aura revealed by Wang Fuzhi, a Ming person, and the verbal sparring between Yuan Mei and Juedeqian, as well as the mutual ridicule between Zhao Zhixin and Wang Yuyang, made it easy to smell the vivid and fiery atmosphere of literary criticism. It was soaked in extremely secular human life and sentiments, which was completely different from the ethereal and detached posture I had always imagined when looking at the book. The primary concern of this book is how to present the overall style of the literary and poetic debates of the Ming Dynasty, in order to attract sufficient attention from researchers. Therefore, it focuses mainly on thematic forms like the debate over Tang and Song poetry, under a broad topic, to see what different opinions people of different periods and identities had, thereby revealing the evolution of literary thought and literary theory.