ENGL 2013: Tang Poetry

Tang Poetry: 600-900AD

The Tang Dynasty a period of great wealth and cultural advancement in China. During this period, Chinese poetry reached new heights.

Confucianism was wide-spread, as were the civil exams which went along with Confucianism’s meritocracy. The knowledge of and respect for poetry which these civil exams, as well as Confucianism itself, demanded, is one reason for the great flowering of poetry in this era.

Buddhism and Taoism also were heavy influences during the Tang Dynasty, and this influence shows in the poetry. 

During the Tang Dynasty, tone (rather than rhyme and incremental repetition) becomes the primary method of creating form in poetry. Rhyme and repetition are still used to some extent, but tone is now the most important element. Since English is not a tonal language, this aspect of the poetry is lost on us.

However, there is also a move toward a more formal structure. Poems more often have one of two structure – the four line poem (jueju) or the eight line poem (lϋshi). These short poems – the jeuju or the lϋshi – can be interlinked thematically to create longer poems.

Each line of these poems also has structure – it is four to seven characters long, and there will be symmetry in these structures. That is, if the poet starts with four characters, he’ll stick with four characters; or he might vary (4-7-4-7).

Notice that these are characters, not syllables. When English speakers work with Chinese forms (such as the Haiku) we often translate “five characters” into “five syllabus,” but in fact what “character” usually means is “word” – so these lines are four to seven words long, not syllables long. And of course their tonal quality would be (for the Tang poet) more important than their length, or the number of syllables each had.

Subjects for poems: In the Tang Dynasty, poetry moved away from the stock subjects of the past – folk songs and stories – and become more personal; the images were also supposed to be more personal, based on real observances, and thus more immediate. Both political and moral topics became more common, as did Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucius themes.

Notable poets include Du Fu and Li Bo.