Title

The Concept of the “Ancient” in the Literature of Early Liu-Song Dynasty Imperial Princes: Imitation, Jian’an, and Military Life

Author

Ohira Sachiyo

Genre

Article  

Pages

249~279

Download

PDF

Language

Chinese

Key words

the imitation of ancient poems, Yuanjia 元嘉, Jian’an 建安, the princes of Liu-Song 劉宋諸王, frontiers, common understanding

Abstract

The princes of the Liu-Song 劉宋 dynasty were stationed at key garrisons in the war with the Northern Wei and their courtiers included many renowned poets. The focus of this article is on the nigu shi 擬古詩 (imitations of ancient poems) composed by these princes and their courtiers. Many of the imitative poems from the Yuanjia 元 嘉 era (424–453) of the Liu-Song dynasty centered on military themes. Whether describing the hardships of distant expeditions or praising the military prowess of the army, Yuanjia poets modeled their writings on the literature of the Jian’an 建安 era. The “Jian’an” did not just serve as a model for wartime poetry; the banquets and poetic compositions of the Jian’an poets, led by Cao Pi 曹丕 (187–226) and Cao Zhi 曹植 (192–232), also became an ideal prototype for the friendship between Yuanjia princes and bureaucrats. For the poets of the Yuanjia era, composing nigu shi was not merely an act of adopting old poetic language as a rhetorical flourish, or attempting to outdo the works of the ancients; it was also an act of romanticizing a kind of ideal “ancient/Jian’an” era. The poets of the Liu-Song dynasty concocted their fictional “Jian’an” era for the purpose of common understanding, and they used this relatable, imagined “antiquity” as a means of expressing contemporary sentiments.