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- Title
The "Bare-handed Combat" Style and the Creative Language of Song Poetics: Composing Poems about Snow by "Forbidding Using Words Depicting the Subject Directly" and Creating Ingenious Diction through Painstaking Construction.
- Authors
Chang Kao-ping
- Abstract
Using the "bare-handed combat" style (...) to compose poems describing snow was frequently mentioned in works on Song dynasty poetics and it was well received as a creative theory in poetic composition. The gist of this theory is to forbid describing the poems in direct language (...). What was labelled as the "bare-handed combat" style rejected stereotyped expressions, classical precedents, eschewed the current model, differed from the establishment, and stressed creation of outstanding vocabulary: ingenious, innovative and even bizarre. We may call such attempts as "creative destruction" or "revolutionary construction." In the words of the commentators, although these works may have "discarded all the familiar things," or "not allowed to hang on something concrete like an inch of iron," they could still "crisscross the boundaries of the poetic world" and appear "outstanding and glamorous in painstaking poetic construction" and served as antidote to plagiarism. In many ways these efforts revealed the trend of emulating antiquity but making innovative changes of the tradition in Song poetry. This paper will first discuss poems of describing objects close to the real features before the Song dynasty, then examine the change to the practice of "forbidding using words depicting the subject directly" in light of the development in Song poetry. I have chosen from the Complete Song Poetry (...) samples of poem describing snow by using the "bare-handed combat" style, and analyse them accordingly. I have identified four characteristics of this style: avoiding errors and showing correctness, detaching from existing model, emphasizing functional role, and describing features to evoke the spirit. They all conformed to the criteria of "forbidding using words depicting the subject directly." In Song times, in literary gatherings and poetry society meetings scholars customarily exchanged poems; and they often challenged the difficult huddle in writing poetry as pastime. The poet therefore sought to be a winner in innovative ways. In this context, their aspiration was aided by the rise of printing and expanded circulation of books. In their attempt to emulate antiquity but renovate the old ways the Song poets sought to change the methodological approach and the writing style and emphasize on creating new ideas and new vocabulary as their distinctive accomplishment. The "bare- handed combat" style stressed the euphemism of the "twists and turns on the truth" just like the practice of the Caodong school of Chan Buddhism (...), which admonished disciples "not to describe directly about the positive nature" (...). These are illustrative examples of the innovative achievements of the Song writers.
- Subjects
CHINA; CHINESE poetry; EAST Asian martial arts; MARTIAL arts in literature; ZEN Buddhism; SNOW in literature; NATURE in literature; SONG dynasty, China, 960-1279; HISTORICAL source material
- Publication
Journal of Chinese Studies, 2009, Vol 49, p173
- ISSN
1016-4464
- Publication type
Article