China 3 Flashcards
was the greatest of China’s ‘Grand Historians’ who
dedicated himself to completing the first history of China the Records of the
Historian. His work covers almost three thousand years of Chinese history in more
than half a million written characters etched onto bamboo tablets.
Ssu-ma Ch’ien (
was Wang Wei’s contemporary and he spent a short time in
courts, but seems to have bee too much of a romantic and too give to drink to
carry out responsibilities. He was a Taoist, drawing sustenance from nature and
his poetry was often other-wordly and ecstatic. He had no great regard for his
poems himself. He is said to have mad thousands of them into paper boats which
he sailed along streams
Li po
is the Confucian moralist, realist, and humanitarian. He was
public-spirited, and his poetry helped chronicle the history of the age: the
deterioration
Tu-Fu
was an 8th century government official who spent the
later years of his life in the country, reading and discussing Buddhism with
scholars and monks. He is known for the pictorial quality of his poetry and for its
economy.
Wang Wei
was born two years after Tu Fu died, at a time when China was still in turmoil from foreign invasion and internal strife. He wrote many
poems speaking bitterly against the social and economic problems that were
plaguing China.
Po Chu 1
is regarded as China’s greatest woman poet
and was also one of the most liberated women of her day. She was brought up in
court society and was trained in the arts and classical literature quite an unusual
upbringing for a woman of the Sung dynasty. Many of her poems composed in
the tz’u form celebrate her happy marriage or express her loneliness when her
husband was away.
Li Ch’ing-chao
has been called the ‘father of the modern Chinese
short story because of his introduction of Western techniques. He is also known
as Lu Hsun whose stories deal with themes of social concern, the problems of the
poor, women, and intellectuals.
Chou-su-jen
