Chinese Poetry Research Articles

A Study on “Chou” Metaphors in 300 Song Lyrics

Advancements in modern cognitive linguistics have rendered metaphor a conceptual tool for understanding the world. The interplay between emotion and cognition highlights the importance of studying human emotions, which are often metaphorized by people. The expression “Chou” is one of the most prevalent emotions in Chinese Song Lyrics. This paper adopts a cognitive linguistics perspective, utilizing 300 Song Lyrics as the corpus, to conduct a detailed exploration and analysis of the types and meanings of “Chou” metaphors by applying Conceptual Metaphor Theory. The study identifies six main types of “Chou” metaphors in 300 Song Lyrics, namely ontological metaphors, image metaphors, body metaphors, personification, synaesthetic metaphors, and reverse metaphors. Among them, the most common are ontological metaphors and image metaphors. This paper aids in a better understanding of the emotion of “Chou” in Song Lyrics. It is also significant for enhancing appreciation of Chinese poetry and literature, while facilitating a deeper understanding of the characteristics of national metaphorical thinking and promoting cultural exchange.

A Contrastive Study of Chinese-English Translation of Ancient Poetry from the Perspective of Aesthetics of Reception: A Case Study of the Two Translations of Vain Longing

The Chinese literary classic "Dream of the Red Chamber" features a variety of poems and songs, with "Vain Longing," which serves as its theme song, being particularly popular among readers both domestically and internationally. Among the many translations available, those by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, along with Hawkes' version, are the most prominent and hold significant research value. Acceptance Aesthetics, which emerged from the German critical school in the 20th century, provides a fresh lens through which to view the translation of ancient Chinese poetry. This paper utilizes Aesthetics of reception as its theoretical framework and focuses on the English translations of "Vain Longing" by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang as well as Hawkes found in "Dream of the Red Chamber." By examining their translation philosophies and approaches, this study aims to contribute insights for translating ancient poetry within literary contexts while enhancing global appreciation for Chinese poetic beauty and promoting classical Chinese culture.

An Analysis of Chinese Narrative Poems from the Perspective of the Narrator, the Case Study of Han Yuefu Poems

This paper explores the narrative techniques in Han Dynasty Yuefu poetry, with particular attention to how the narrator’s perspective enhances both storytelling and emotional depth. Through the analysis of selected poems, it highlights how shifts between omniscient and limited perspectives enrich character portrayal and convey complex emotions. By placing Yuefu poetry within the broader tradition of Chinese literature, the study challenges the common perception that classical Chinese poetry is purely lyrical, suggesting instead that narrative elements play a crucial role. It argues for a re-evaluation of these poems, emphasising the interplay between narration and emotion, and how this contributes to the development of Chinese narrative art. Additionally, the paper considers how Yuefu poetry, with its distinct narrative strategies, laid important groundwork for later developments in Chinese literary traditions. This study underscores the importance of looking at ancient Chinese poetry from a narrative perspective, recognising its contribution to the evolution of storytelling in Chinese literature.

Europeanization, Mordenization: How the Syntax of Chinese New poetry Changed Influenced by the Translated Western Poems

The New Culture Movement of the early twentieth century promoted vernacular literature to construct a literature close to the people. However, the vernacular language was not used as an official language for a long time, resulting in its lack of complex structure and ability to express itself in refined ways. With the translation of modern Western poetry, their preserved modern Western syntax gradually influenced the creation of new poems, and the language of new poems was gradually Europeanized, with the emergence of many Europeanized syntactic features. Although this also resulted in the disadvantages of a strange and lengthy language and lower acceptance by the public, it provided a rich syntactic framework for the creation of new literature and adapted to the needs of modernization.

Ancient Chinese Poem “The Song of Bride”: Features of Translation by A.A. Shtukin

The translation of A.A. Shtukin’s poem “The Song of the Bride”, which is part of the collection of ancient Chinese hymns and songs “Shijing”, is being considered. The relevance of the study is determined by the interest of Chinese researchers in the quality of translations of Chinese poetry into European languages, particularly Russian. There is noted interest from both Chinese and Russian researchers in the translation of the book “Shijing”, as it varies depending on the perception of foreign cultures. The features of A.A. Shtukin’s translation of the poem “The Song of the Bride” are highlighted in terms of the images he created and the linguistic specifics. It is pointed out that Shtukin’s translation of the poems from “Shijing” is recognized as one of the best. The analysis of the translation revealed the following characteristics: the preservation of the original work’s color through botanical metaphors, sound, and structural organization of the text. Some shortcomings in conveying the atmosphere of ancient Chinese lyricism from the perspective of native Chinese speakers who also speak Russian were also identified; the translation differs from the original in that it insufficiently conveys the atmosphere of ancient Chinese lyricism, which can be easily explained by the differences in worldviews among speakers of different languages.

Research on the Path of Cultivating College Students' Values Through Chinese Poetry Culture

Chinese poetry has rich cultural connotations and plays a role in moral cultivation education, struggle spirit education, and patriotism education. However, at present, the cultivation of values among college students through Chinese poetry still faces challenges such as limited dissemination of Chinese poetry in university classrooms, insufficient campus cultural atmosphere, insufficient social practice activities, and weakening in online trends. To cultivate values among college students through Chinese poetry culture, it is necessary to optimize classroom teaching, construct educational carriers, shape "campus culture", enrich social practice, leverage online classrooms, and build a new situation of multi-faceted and interconnected education.

Aesthetics and Creativity: A Preliminary Exploration of Modern Poetry Teaching in Primary School Chinese——Taking Ai Qing’s Teaching of “Green” as an Example

Among all literary works, the language of poetry is the most concise, unique, and timeless, and its expression of emotions is particularly rich. Learning poetry can enhance one’s ability to appreciate various literary works. The way to enhance the aesthetic understanding of poetry itself is closely related to quality education in Chinese language teaching. Undoubtedly, it is particularly important for classroom teaching to guide students in creating poetic scenarios, inspiring them to explore the artistic conception of poetry, and guiding them to appreciate the unique expression of poetry. Teaching students the general method of self-reading and self-understanding modern poetry can be seen as a way to make poetry teaching twice the result with half the effort. Based on this, this article takes Ai Qing’s “Green” as an example to explore the teaching path of modern poetry in primary school Chinese for reference.

Sentiment Analysis of Chinese Ancient Poetry Based on Multidimensional Attention Under the Background of Digital Intelligence Integration

Abstract Poetry was a unique literary genre in ancient China as an important way to express sentiments. Chinese ancient poetry not only has simple words, strict meters and rich semantic relationships, but also widely uses rhetorical techniques such as simile and personification, as well as metaphorical means such as allusion and imagery, which makes it difficult to understand their implicit sentiments quickly and accurately. Therefore, this paper attempts to make full use of the semantic features of Chinese ancient poetry text and the knowledge feature of related domains under the guidance of the research paradigm of digital intelligence integration, and based on which, proposed Sentiment Analysis Model of Chinese Ancient Poetry based on Multidimensional Attention (SAMCAP). This model extracts semantic features from Chinese ancient poetry text, meanwhile designs a multidimensional attention to extract the knowledge feature from the knowledge base of Chinese ancient poetry. The recognition of Chinese ancient poetry sentiment is performed by integrating the textual feature and knowledge feature. Comparison experiments on the open ancient poetry corpus verified the effectiveness of the proposed model, and the ablation experiment explored the importance of different knowledge to the sentiment analysis result of Chinese ancient poetry.

The Integration of Traditional Chinese Culture into the English Grammar Course in Regular Higher Education: A Practical Case Study

In the interconnected global society today, the significance of integrating traditional Chinese culture into English grammar education cannot be overstated, but it is often ignored in the practical teaching and theoretical research. Hence, this study aims to explore this integration in regular higher education to promote ideological and political education and their intercultural competence. Research questions include how traditional Chinese culture is practically integrated into the English grammar course in regular higher education and whether this integration is effectively achieved as well as what suggestions can be proposed for the future English grammar course and research. Considering this, a practical case study in the context of Xianda College of Economics and Humanities, Shanghai International Studies University in China is employed to address these questions. Twenty-nine first-year English majors, both females and males, voluntarily participate as research subjects. The specific research methods mainly involve a two-round questionnaire survey and a one-round interview. One of the conclusion is that traditional Chinese culture can be practically integrated into the English grammar course in regular education by the the strategy of “4-R”, namely “Revise Teaching Goals and Objectives, Refine Teaching Content, Revitalize Teaching Methods and Reform Teaching Evaluation”. This study focuses on adopting Chinese ancient poetry, Chinese opera, Chinese architecture, and Chinese festival customs as the main materials for traditional Chinese culture related to grammar points in this course. Moreover, based on the participants’ feedback from the second-round questionnaire survey and one-round interview, it is effectively carried out and attains the quality goals in the overall teaching syllabus to a large extent. Another conclusion is that some suggestions from students and the teacher are provided for the future English grammar course and relevant research.

Inner Mongolian poetry and song as a form of resistance

Against the backdrop of cultural assimilation policies taking place in Inner Mongolia and associated with a political regime geared to economic expansion, this article seeks to explore in which ways Mongolian poetry and song are being mobilized as a tacit and non-violent mode of resistance. Resistance in this paper does not only refer to challenging an immediate power structure with the objective of changing the status quo. Defined through a wider epistemological lens, it represents actions that continually empower the individual and the group to have autonomy over their history and future. We argue that by providing a means to contest, or reject the sanitized, stripped, and depoliticized Mongolian identity pushed by the Chinese state, poetry and songs serve as acts and spaces of resistance and emancipation, upheld by the continuous co-creation, and defense of collective memories.

Contemporary Chinese poetry in English translation: an interview with Nick Admussen

ABSTRACT Nick Admussen is an associate professor of Chinese literature at Asian Studies Department, Cornell University, where his research and translation focus on contemporary Chinese poetry. He is an acclaimed poetry scholar and translator as well as a prolific essayist and poet. In this interview, which took place via email in April – May 2024, Admussen reviews his career path and shares his observations about the study, translation and reception of contemporary Chinese poetry in the West. The conversation focuses on such intriguing topics as Lu Xun’s prose poem collection Yecao野草in English translation, the translating, publishing, and reception of Floral Mutter: Selected Poetry of Ya Shi, Admussen’s theorization about translating contemporary Chinese poetry into English, and the status quo of this Chinese genre in English translation. Informative, insightful, and sometimes inquisitive, it should be of much interest to those pursuing Chinese literature studies and literary translation studies.

The Relation Between Natsume Soseki's Chinese Poems and Ancient Chinese Poetry

As an outstanding representative of modern Japanese literature, Natsume Soseki has an important position in the history of modern Japanese literature. He is a world-renowned novelist who has written many excellent novels. However, it is far from enough to study Natsume Soseki's literature only from the aspects of novels. Throughout Natsume Soseki's life, he studied Chinese studies since childhood, has great enthusiasm and interest in Chinese literature, and has a high accomplishment in Chinese literature. However, his outstanding ability in Chinese poetry was covered up by his writing ability in novels, which did not get the attention of the academic circle. Natsume Soseki's Chinese poems are in the same vein as Chinese poems, and he draws on and learns from ancient Chinese poems in the aspects of creation techniques and theme emotions. From the perspective of cultural studies, this paper makes an in-depth study of the relationship between Natsume Soseki's Chinese poetry and ancient Chinese poetry by means of comparative study. On the basis of previous studies, this paper expounds Natsume Soseki's Chinese poetry creation and its sinology origin, analyzes and summarizes the Chinese elements in his Chinese poetry works, in order to explore Natsume Soseki's contribution to the cross-communication field of Chinese poetry between China and Japan.

The Comments on Ezra Pound

As one of the representatives of Western literary theories, Ezra Pound not only made outstanding contributions to the development of the Western translation theory, but also promoted the communication between Chinese and Western poetics. His translation practice is rich and far-reaching. He also proposes the creative translation method. For example, Pound’s translation of ancient Chinese poetry can show remarkable creativity. Therefore, after sorting out relevant materials, this paper gives a brief introduction to him, his translation theories and translation practices, and also concludes his translation thoughts and his immense influence on the translation field, aiming to provide case references for translators to study and enrich their understanding of the representative figures of the Western literary theory.

Qian Zhongshu’s continuation and expansion of Lessing’s Laokoon

Through a close comparative reading of Lessing’s Laokoon (1766) with two essays by Qian Zhongshu, titled ‘Chinese Poetry and Chinese Painting’ (1940/1979/1985) and ‘On Reading Laokoon’ (1962/1985), this article produces a new understanding of Qian’s interpretation and, more importantly, expansion of the key aesthetic and philological concepts that Lessing raises in Laokoon. One of Lessing’s crucial motives for writing Laokoon was to challenge the endorsement of the superiority of painting over poetry by the majority of intellectuals during his time and to instead place both art forms on equal footing. Qian Zhongshu, meanwhile, began using Laokoon as an analytical tool and then embarked on an aesthetic and philological endeavour to place Western and Chinese literature on an equal footing.

Stylistic codification of traditional forms of poetic text (based on the material of the ancient Chinese theoretical study of poetry “Shi-Ping” (诗品, “Categories of Poems”)

Abstract The study of the main works that codified the classical forms of the Chinese text is important for analysing the ways of development of poetic works and determining the formation of their stylistic norms, mechanisms, and thematic concepts. The research aims to analyse the peculiarities of the stylistic codification of ancient Chinese traditional verse forms based on the theoretical material of Zhong Rong’s “Shi-Ping” (诗品). The following methods were used: deductive, content analysis, and comparative. The research results determined that ancient Chinese poetry is known for its unique depth, sophistication, and richness of images. Zhong Rong’s treatise “Shi-Ping” influenced the formation of stylistic features of classical Chinese five-line poetry. The analysis of its textual data has shown that this anthology emphasises the importance of the poetic form, especially rhythm and melody, and provides specific recommendations for the use of iambic pentameter, which contributed to its popularisation and development. The practical significance lies in the use of the information by scholars in the fields of philology, linguistics, cultural studies, linguistics, as well as specialists who study the traditional forms of Chinese poetic text.

Copiously Quote Classics: Improving Chinese Poetry Generation with historical allusion knowledge

Integrating allusions into poems is an advanced form of human poetry writing, which could clearly express the author’s thoughts and arouse the resonance of readers. However, existing poetry generation works mainly focus on improving the coherence and fluency of poetry, while generating poems with allusion knowledge is rarely considered. To solve this issue, we propose an Allusion-aware Chinese Poetry Generation (ACPG) framework in this study. Concretely, we first release an Allusion-Enriched Poetry (AEP) dataset by linking poems with historical allusions, which might enable a new research direction for poetry generation. Based on this dataset, we design a three-stage learning mechanism to encourage the training stage under a low-resource setting, which can effectively exploit the knowledge of large-scale poetry and allusion data to generate informative allusive poems. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of ACPG among a series of proposed baselines. Moreover, the proposed ACPG framework can also be applied to lyrics generation or other controlled text generation tasks, which can incorporate allusion knowledge into the generated results and enhance the meaning and quality of the texts.

Current Situation and Countermeasures of Teaching Chinese Ancient Poetry

Current Situation and Countermeasures of Teaching Chinese Ancient Poetry

Exploring Thematic Diversity in Classical Chinese Poetry: A Novel Dataset and a BERT-enhanced Ensemble Learning Approach

Classical Chinese poetry, as an essential aspect of cultural heritage, exhibits rich theme diversity often overlooked in natural language processing research. To address this gap, we aim to explore the classification of thematic categories within this literary domain. We curate a dataset of 2,918 annotated poems spanning seven common themes and propose a BERT-based ensemble learning approach for effective classification. Although this method integrates existing models, it achieves an accuracy and F1 score of over 72% in the 7-class task, surpassing established baselines, and providing a baseline for future research. The experimental findings reveal the effectiveness of ensemble strategies in improving individual base model performance and highlight the potential of the MLP-based ensemble technique. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of thematic categories and textual features in classical Chinese poetry, and offers an automated classification system for classical Chinese poems.

A relational background knowledge boosting based topic model for Chinese poems

Classical Chinese poetry has been increasingly popular in recent years, and modeling its topic is quite a promising area of research. Chinese poems have the characteristic of short in length, but traditional topic models perform poorly when faced with short texts due to the text sparsity. Therefore, topic model should be improved to satisfy the scenario of classical Chinese poems. In this paper, a relational background knowledge boosting based topic model (RBKBTM) was proposed to overcome the text sparsity of Chinese poems. We incorporated background information into the model, which expanded the text content from the semantic perspective. The background knowledge was combined using word embedding and TextRank and was then fed into the core computing process. Subsequently, a new sampling formula was derived. Our proposed model was tested on three different tasks using three different datasets. The results demonstrate that the incorporated background knowledge can effectively overcomes text sparsity, improving the performance and effectiveness of the topic model.

The Artistic Characteristics and Singing Analysis of the Ancient Poetry Art Song Ru Meng Ling

Art songs based on classical Chinese poetry began to emerge in the 1920s and have since become a common and significant genre in contemporary Chinese vocal music. This genre uniquely combines Western compositional techniques with ancient Chinese poetry, resulting in songs that feature piano accompaniments and melodies that align with the emotional trajectory of the lyrics while also embedding the deep cultural heritage of China. These songs embody the enduring beauty of Chinese culture, with long, melodious tunes and a timeless ancient charm. Whether in the process of tracing their origins, studying them, or performing them, people are invariably moved by their cultural significance, thereby enhancing cultural identity and confidence. This genre adds a vibrant hue to the development of modern music. This paper focuses on Li Qingzhao's poem "Like a Dream: Often Remembering the Sunset at the Creek Pavilion" and the art song "Like a Dream" composed by Wang Chao. Using literature research, score analysis, and inductive methods, the paper explores and reflects on the song from two perspectives: its artistic characteristics and vocal performance analysis.