A Chinese Aesthetics Reading of Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey ---with a Comparison to Chunjiang Huayue Ye

Bai Li-Bing

doi:10.7575/aiac.ijclts.v.2n.2p.11

Abstract

The nature poetry written by English Romantic poet Wordsworth is a milestone in English literary history. Its inbuilt aesthetics is much similar with that of ancient Chinese Mountain-Water poetry. The most remarkable aspect is the fusion of feeling and scene, in which philosophy, aesthetics, and poetics are interwoven into a thematic unity. In this perspective, one Chinese nature poem Chunjiang Huayue Ye written by early Tang Dynasty poet Zhang Ruoxu can be well compared. This mutual illumination not only yields a dialogical channel, more importantly, it also discovers the potential values of the two: first, Wordsworth’s unique aesthetical awareness is forwarded; second, it helps to globalize and modernize ancient Chinese literary theory

Highlights

Chinese Mountain-Water Poetry (山水诗), or nature poetry, has a long tradition
One Chinese nature poem Chunjiang Huayue Ye written by early Tang Dynasty poet Zhang Ruoxu can be well compared
Wordsworth’s nature poetry is a milestone in English history of poetry, and a masterpiece according to ancient Chinese aesthetics of nature poetry, so it can be well interpreted by Chinese poetic theory

Summary

Introduction

Chinese Mountain-Water Poetry (山水诗), or nature poetry, has a long tradition. But the correspondent poetic genre in English literature started very late. Though a little alien categorically, he made a monumental study that gave a countable way to pigeonhole Chinese literary criticisms, which have been regarded as unsystematic empiricisms in the west The age of Six Dynasties was the second Renaissance in Chinese literary history, among social upheavals and quick succession of dynasties, the different schools of thoughts surged, literature got its independence, and literary aesthetics germinated Poetry in this time deviated from the moralizing tradition of Han dynasty, the genre of natural scene-eulogizing poetry began to take place. The later five-character-line poetry, or Wujue (五绝,classical Chinese genre of IJCLTS 2 (2):11-18, 2014 poetry with four five-character lines, came into being in Tang Dynasty) restricted by its length, divorced from the Han dynasty narrative style It began to put great theme in laconic words, entrust feeling in the description of natural scenes. The nature poetry written by English poet Wordsworth deserves a high regard in this perspective, his famous nature poem Tintern Abbey serves as a good example

Fusion of Feeling and Scene in Tintern Abbey

The Internal and the External

Conclusion