Romance, Poetic Voice and Literati Identity in Li Shangyin’s Love Poems
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Date
2019-09-18
Authors
Nie, Shijia
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
My dissertation explores the relationship between the literary, religious and entertainment culture of mid to late Tang and the voices in Li Shangyin’s romantic poems that reinvented the literati romantic identity. By comparing to historical poetic representations of women and romantic love as well as the mid-to-late Tang romantic poetry fervor, I argue that Li was the sole poet in the mid to late Tang who went as far as using romantic sentiments as a means of literary innovation to build literati identity by his reinvention of the voices in romantic poetry that comes with a solid lyrical tradition. His exploration of unconventional representations of romantic relation conditioned the refined confessional voice of male longing in romantic poetry as the expression of emotional sincerity that was the core value of shi from the beginning, and surpassed the romantic persona that only addressed the male part and included female subjectivity into this dialogue that contributes to the authentic sophistication of the male literati’s romantic subjectivity. The dissertation then puts Li’s romantic poetry into the background of the entertainment culture of the literati poetry as the lyrics for music to see how his reinvention of romantic subjectivities provide ideological and stylistic conditions for the development of romantic ci poetry in the poetic transition from the Tang to the Song.
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Keywords
Li Shangyin, literati romantic identity, poetic voice, Tang culture