Bücher von Wang Ying

From the 2nd century BC, the view emerged in China that the intent of the author is crucial to a poem¿s composition and understanding. Writing was seen as the manifestation of the author¿s inner spiritual nature and identity. Thus all writing was to some extent autobiographical; writing about oneself had to be indirect, rather than overt or blatant. There were a number of obstacles to the development of autobiography as a genre in China. A high value was placed on humility, and writers hesitated to focus on themselves, only rarely writing in the first person. They used different names for themselves, and unlikely literary forms, such as prefaces to works, or biographies of other people, or speaking through fictional characters. There was also resistance to autobiography, because it was thought that a life or career could only be assessed when it was over. There was still a substantial amount of autobiographical writing in ancient and Medieval China. This book focuses primarily on the Tang and Song periods, and on the development of the literary form of the self-written epitaph; the earlier development of the genre and its later influence are also discussed.

All the bird imageries present in the poetic compositions turned out in the historical period spanning Tang and Song were undergoing a series of modifications, through which they segued from the format generated of primitivism and totemic cult to that characterized by the preponderance of the poetic style of ¿yong wü and of relevant rhetorical devices. All the literary works produced in the above specified historical period wear the insignia of cultural fission and re-integration. In the above specified historical period, the ancient image of bird, as a token of some ancient religious faith, was translated into such an image of a very commonplace entity as were usually thought of by the literati. The ancient image of bird which betokened some primitive religious faith went through metamorphoses in the above specified historical period to assume the semblance of a way of living. The bird imageries adopted by Tang or Song range from the image of a deified bird to the entire spectrum of real winged creatures. Thus from the the images of birds, we can see the cultural transformation in the Tang & Song Dynasties, China.

There was a long tradition existed in Chinese history which sung for objects. Flower-Singing Poetry is one of the important types of Chinese Object-Singing Poetry. The images of flowers are rooted in Chinese Culture which has unique aesthetic connotation and spiritual value. During the Tang and Song Dynasties, there were huge climates of loving flowers and upsurges of flower-singing. It drove the promotion of the spiritual experience of China in the manner of formations of national flowers. This book explores the formative process and flowing deformation of the national flowers during the Tang and Song Dynasties, so as to reveal the ideological and artistic value exceeding the age of the images of national flowers during the Tang and Song Dynasties and how it constructed the integrate harmonious and fruitful Chinese cultural spirit.