자아 쓰기와 이야기 쓰기- 중국고전시가에서의 抒情과 敍事

Abstract

This essay attempts to redefine the genre characteristic in Chinese classical poetry by applying the two concepts of “self” and “narrative.” In the traditional period, the literati in ancient China believed that literary works must express one’s emotions. Although the rigid rule that emotions should be expressed in a lyrical genre and that the narrative delivery system should be implemented in the epic style did not exist, over time the literati increasingly tended to differentiate clearly between the roles of the two items. After learning from various texts of the Han Dynasty 漢代, the literati successfully created a poetic self that could represent the poet’s emotions since the Wei Jin 魏晉 period, and they even tried to standardize the types of emotions expressed by the poetic self. Through the Jian’an 建安 period, the emotions in literary works were restricted to “the refined and empathic style.” For this reason, while in many poems of the Wei Jin 魏晉 and Six Dynasties 六朝 period, we can easily find the poetic self succeed in interiorizing emotions, we cannot find the embodiment of narrative which is considered to interrupt the delivery of emotions. I think the narrative delivery system was initiated early, but the initiative was taken away from self-expression only rarely in Chinese lyric poetry. The following several features appeared in the successful cases of the narrative delivery in Chinese poetry. First, pure fiction must be avoided and narrative must be based on an event that actually happened or is likely to happen in real life. Second, when delivering narrative in poetry, the literati paid attention to the way of highlighting some short scenes rather than constructing the overall framework. Third, no matter how much the literati appreciated the value of narrative in Chinese poetry, they did not acknowledge the authority of narrative to overpower the poetic self. In conclusion, the poetic self seized the absolute authority in Chinese verse, whereas the narrative element in verse was only an auxiliary means to express the emotions of the poetic self. We may, therefore, reasonably conclude that “poetry expresses intent(shi yan zhi)” was the only doctrine that controlled the writing world of the literati until the end of the traditional period in China.