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A Return to Tradition? : "Neoclassicism" in Poetry of Song Brothers and Shi Guanghua

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2018

Abstract

A new phenomenon occurred in 1980's on Chinese poetry scene - after decades of denying the domestic tradition, some of the so-called Third generation poets started to find their way back to it. Unlike the more popular "searching for the roots" movement authors however, they turned mainly to its classical part.

In various ways they incorporated elements of classical Tang and Song poems, as well as references to well-known traditional works, into their own (fundamentally modern) poetry. The term "neoclassicism" (xingudianzhuyi) comes from an excentric theory of Chen Zhongyi.

In 2014, Olga Lomová introduced this concept into Czech academia. The aim of this paper was to present results of the analysis further developing their research.

Implicit and explicit ways of approaching the classical tradition present in their choice of subject matter, imagery and form, were demonstrated on the samples of the poetry of the "neoclassical" poets Song Qu (*1963), Song Wei (*1964) and Shi Guanghua (*1958), who call themselves "wholists" (wholism = zhengtizhuyi). The conclusion of the presentation was marked by a reflection on the possibility (or indeed impossibility) of a return to the tradition and a question to what degree it is even possible to connect the values of modern and traditional poetry anchored in different cultural and social context.