This book examines Chinese traditional poetry with an emphasis on the sources of pleasure in creating and enjoying classical Chinese poems and the basis for valid aesthetic judgments about poetry.
The pleasure derived from art plays a crucial role in peoples evaluation of its worth. This book shows that Chinese classical poetics and Western aesthetics agree on the sources of aesthetic pleasure. Both hold, despite their obvious differences, that aesthetic taste essentially involves cognition. The book explores important ideas in traditional Chinese poetry, emphasizing that judgment (shi) is the foundation of poetry. This central idea guides other key concepts throughout the history of Chinese poetics, revealing the fundamental principles of creating and appreciating poetic art. The author presents new views of traditional Chinese poetry and poetics by unifying these long-dispersed basic propositions into a new coherent cognitivist framework that also gives due importance to emotion.
Scholars and students studying Chinese literature, poetics, philosophy, philosophy of art, and philosophy of mind will find this book of interest.
This book examines Chinese traditional poetry with an emphasis on the sources of pleasure in creating and enjoying classical Chinese poems and the basis for valid aesthetic judgments about poetry.
Introduction
1. Beyond aesthetic tastes: Why can beauty make universal
claim?
2. Universal cognitive laws upon which aesthetic judgment of Chinese
classical poetry is grounded
3. The proposition with the most salient
cognitive attributes in the history of Chinese poetics: Poetry is founded
upon the power of judgment
4. The relationship among aspiration, emotion,
and judgment, and the intermediary role of intent
5. An analysis of the
cognitive nature of intent
6. How qi (vital force) and ge (manner) lead to
the issue of judgment: The examination on qi and ge
7. Principle (li) and
judgment: An examination of principle
8. Ideorealm and judgment:
Cognitive issues in ideorealm
Song Ye is currently a lecturer at Hebei University, China. His research interests include the Chinese classical poetics, Chinese and Western aesthetics, and Chinese classical poems. He is also a poet and has published his own classical poetic work, Collection of Poetic Insights (Yuanshi Ji, 2018).
