+ About the Speakers

RELATED TOPIC:
The Book of Songs and China's Literary Tradition

RELATED TOPIC:
Wang Can and the Poetry of Scholar-Officials during the Han

RELATED TOPIC:
Tao Qian and the Tradition of Retreat

RELATED TOPIC:
Prelude to Tang Poetry: Poetry of the Zhou and Han

 
POETRY OF RETREAT
AT THE FALL OF THE HAN

Introduction

Robert Oxnam :: The fall of the Han dynasty, to which Wang Can alludes, influences the lives of the Chinese literati and the poetry they write over the next several centuries.

Paul Rouzer :: Following the collapse of the Han dynasty, Chinese intellectuals, Chinese philosophers, were basically forced to abandon their service of the state to some extent.

Even though various Chinese dynasties continued to operate between the third century AD and the sixth century AD, the government was basically very unsteady, and many educated Chinese males hesitated to serve the state.

Robert Oxnam :: As the educated elite withdrew temporarily from state service, they wrote poems to express their philosophical musings.

In these poems, now known as the "poetry of retreat," we find Confucian ideas and sensitivities combined with those of another of China's great philosophical traditions: Daoism. The word dao, meaning "the Way," refers to the way inherent in nature's rhythms and forms