Center, periphery, and frontier – Tang Qi’s 1946 Chinese sonnets

Given the backdrop of the ongoing warfare between China and Japan, an essential issue underlying the 1940s Chinese poetry would be its interrelationship with the Time. In a time of crisis, whether poetry should or could satisfy the need to represent reality? A juvenile poet on the threshold of the poetic circle at that time, Tang Qi 唐祈 (1920-1990) endeavored to develop an answer of his own. In his unfledged practices, Tang Qi organically integrated multifaceted literary resources into his personal experience in Northwestern China, demonstrating that poetry can be a synthesis of the pursuit of poetics and the solicitude of reality. This thesis hereof examines two Chinese sonnets (zhongwen shisihangshi 中文十四行詩) of Tang Qi published in 1946, which are argued to epitomize the early writing experience of the poet from 1939 to 1946. In this way, this thesis aims to delve into Tang Qi’s pre-modernistic period as a poet and his contemplation on the Zeitgeist, in lieu of univocally regarding Tang Qi as a member of the “Nine Leaves” School or a modernist. Prior to analyzing the poems, the thesis introduces Tang Qi’s early life experience in Gansu, when he was not yet a member of the “Nine Leaves.” Via close readings of the poetic texts and the contextualization of the preceding and contemporary intellectual history of the poet’s time, the thesis then digs into two aspects of Tang Qi’s venture, his approach and his impetus. While the first main chapter (Chapter II) sorts out the mechanism of Tang Qi’s adaptation, appropriation, and abandonment of the literary resources in reconstructing the figure of “shepherdess,” the second main chapter (Chapter III) inquiries about the stylistic and sociological propositions that conceivably impact the poet’s choice of adopting the genre of sonnet. The two poems showcase a new insight into Tang Qi’s poetic aesthetics and cultural politics. Based on this observation, the last chapter of the thesis offers a recontextualization of Tang Qi to the 1940s. By placing the poet’s life trajectory within the coordinator of center and periphery, this thesis not only presents an alternative façade of Tang Qi, but highlights the organic networking among threads of literary sections in the field of 1940s Chinese poetry.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

E Asian Languages & Cultures

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2023

Author dc:creator

• Wang, Zhengyuan

Contributors dc:contributor

• Chen, Jingling
• SHAO, Dan
• Persiani, Gian-Piero

• Tang Qi
• Chinese Sonnet
• Frontier Poetry

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2023 Zhengyuan Wang

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/120340

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F120340