Modern Chinese Poetry: Theory and Practice since 1917

Abstract

Modern Chinese poetry, says Michelle Yeh is both a revolt against ancient literary tradition that has lost its vitality and a response to the changing sociopolitical and cultural conditions of the 20th century. In this book Yeh examines the theoretical and artistic aspects of the poetry as well as its historical and literary contexts. She explains why modern Chinese poetry has evolved the way it has and compares it with the 3000 year Chinese classical tradition. Among factors contributing to the revolution in poetry, Yeh discusses the loss of a universal value system and a clearly defined role for the art. She looks at the creation of a private, introverted and idiosyncratic world in which artistic experiment occures in ways that would have been inconcievable in traditional poetics. Yeh focuses on some stylistic features unique to modern Chinese poetry and discusses the ways in which Chinese poetry since 1917 has become receptive to the influence of modernism in the West and has both integrated and transformed tradition. The book contains many original translations of poems that either have never been translated or have not been translated well. An appendix provides the Chinese original for all the poems discussed. There is also a glossary of Chinese names shown in Chinese characters, in Pinyin romanization and in Wade-Giles romanization.