Fragments, remembrance, beauty: breathing life into T’ang poetry through educational drama

Abstract

This article explores the possibility of introducing classical Chinese poetry to primary-aged children in China through educational drama. Today young people in China generally regard classical poetry as cultural relic which is remote and irrelevant to their lives. Referring to writings of Chia-ying Yeh and Stephen Owen, I argue that the essence of classical poetry study is to evoke the reader’s literary imagination and emotional response to the poetic discourse. Drawing from reception theory, I suggest that drama as a pedagogy can connect with the aesthetic discourses and to help children engage with the text. This article presents theoretical explanations and practical descriptions on how the drama approaches are designed to provide children with the contextual references that allow them to relate to the poem at their personal levels of experience; and to help them feel, in an embodied form, the beauty of poetic language.