毕业论文---acomparative-study-on-the-pastoral-poetry-between-wordsworth-and-tao-yuanming-英语专业.doc

学号
20095061706

本科毕业论文（设计）

系（院） 　　外 国 语 学 院　　　　　　　　
专 业 英　　　　　语
年 级 2 0 0 9 级
姓 名 李 珍 珍　　
论文（设计）题目 A Comparative Study on the Pastoral Poetry Between Wordsworth and Tao Yuanming
指导教师 　余 永 锋 职称 讲 师　
2013 年 3 月 21 日

Contents

Abstract 2
Key words 3
摘 要 3
关键词 3
1. Introduction 3
1.1 A Brief Introduction to William Wordsworth and Tao Yuanming 3
1.2 Pastoral Poetry of Wordsworth and Tao Yuanming 4
2. Wordsworth’s and Tao Yuanming’s Pastoral Poetry: Similarities 6
2.1 Way to Rural life 6
2.2 Themes in Pastoral Poetry 8
2.3 Poetic Language 9
3. Wordsworth’s and Tao Yuanming’s Pastoral Poetry: Differences 11
3.1 Poetic Realm 11
3.2 Unique Viewpoint on Nature 14
3.3 Spiritual Pursuit 15
Bibliography 18

A Comparative Study on the Pastoral Poetry Between
Wordsworth and Tao Yuanming
Name: Li Zhenzhen No.: 20095061706
English Major School of Foreign Languages
Supervisor: Yu Yongfeng Title: Instructor
Abstract: William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Tao Yuanming (365-427) are the most prominent pastoral poets in English and Chinese literary histories and have made great contribution to the development of pastoral poetry. The paper explores the similarities and differences in Wordsworth’s and Tao Yuanming’s pastoral poetry in several aspects. This comparative study intends not only to track the ideological development of the two poets and to achieve a better understanding of their poems, but more importantly, to probe into what lies behind the similarities and differences. Hopefully, the research may contribute to a more profound literary and cultural communication between the East and the West.
Key Words: Wordsworth; Tao Yuanming; pastoral poetry; similarities and differences
摘 要:华兹华斯（1770-1850）和陶渊明（365-472）是中英诗坛上杰出的田园诗人，为田园诗的发展做出了极大的贡献。本文试从这两位田园诗人的”回归田园之路”、“诗歌创作题材”、“诗歌创作语言”三方面探讨二人的相同之处，并试从“田园诗歌意境营造”、“独特的自然观”和“蕴含在田园诗中的精神追求”分析二人的相异之处。通过对华兹华斯和陶渊明的田园诗歌的初步分析比较，不仅要探寻两位诗人的创作思想的异同，从而更好地理解他们的作品，更重要的是通过比较研究来揭示二人的田园诗创作对当今诗歌发展的启示，借以为东西文学与文化的交流作一有益的探索与尝试。
关键词:华兹华斯;陶渊明;田园诗;相同点和不同点
1. Introduction
1.1 A Brief Introduction to William Wordsworth and Tao Yuanming
William Wordsworth (1770-1850), British poet, received his education at Cambridge University. In the early 1790s William lived for a time in France where he was swept into the violent French Revolution that played an important role in his poetic creation. After returning from France, Wordsworth settled in the Lake District of Northern England, and he dedicated himself to poetry writing. He was a defining member of the English Romantic Movement. Like other Romantics, Wordsworth’s personality and poetry were deeply influenced by his love of nature, especially by the sights and scenes of the Lake Country（Lake District）. As profoundly earnest and sincere thinker, he displayed a high seriousness temper with tenderness and a love of simplicity.(可以再稍多一些内容如：儿时乡间生活的熏陶以及大量的旅行经历等)
William Wordsworth was born and grew up in the Lake District, the beautiful area of mountains, lakes, and streams near the Scottish border in northwest England. The natural beauty and grandeur of this area was a major source of inspiration for Wordsworth throughout his life. His mother died when he was eight. Wordsworth was sent to school at Hawshead, a town further south in the Lake District. He was a lively and sometimes a moody boy. He loved to spend his free time roaming about the countryside and getting to know the country people. The memories of these years were transformed into magnificent verses. He thinks that nature is good to one’s moral health. The farmers and their children are simple and courageous because they always live in the dells, among clear streams and in broad fields; people should try to find power, beauty and knowledge in nature even if they live in selfish evil society.
Tao Yuanming (365-427), Chinese poet of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, is considered the founder of the pastoral poetry school in the history of Chinese literature. He was once determined to secure an official position in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. Because he was dissatisfied with the social realities of his day, he abandoned his post and returned to the country life. He spent some twenty-two years in seclusion, supporting his family by farming and devoting the rest of the time to writing. Talented in various genres of prose and poetry, he described in his writings the natural beauty and his rustic life, permeated with his antipathy for the privileged and his aloofness in the status quo. Tao Yuanming’s personality and works are held in very high esteem. Since the Song Dynasty, “plainness” and “naturalness” have become the fixed attributes to Tao Yuanming’s poems, and he has thus occupied an important place in the history of Chinese literature.
Though coming from different countries and times, William Wordsworth and Tao Yuanming share the love of nature and the tranquility of the rural life. By choosing nature and the incidents of the rural life as the themes in their poetic creations, and they have contributed much to the development of the pastoral poetry. A study on their poems entails a brief introduction of the origin and development of the pastoral poetry.
1.2 Introduction to Pastoral Poetry of Wordsworth and Tao Yuanming
William Wordsworth’s monumental poetic legacy rests on a large number of important poems, varying in length and weight from the short, simple pastoral poems of the 1790s to the vast expanses of The Prelude, thirteen books long in its 1808 edition. But the themes that run through Wordsworth’s poetry, and the language and imagery he uses to embody those themes, remain remarkably consistent throughout all his poems, adhering largely to the tenets Wordsworth set out for himself in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads.
The publication of Lyrical Ballads represents a landmark for English poetry. It is unlike anything that had come before, and paves the way for everything that is to come after. According to the theory that poetry results from the “spontaneous overflow” of emotions, as Wordsworth writes in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth and Coleridge make it their task to write poems in the simple language of common people rather than in the lofty and elaborate dictions that were then considered “poetic”. According to this theory, poetry originates in “emotion recollected in a state of tranquility”; the poet then surrenders to the emotion, so that the tranquility dissolves, and the emotion remains in the poem. This explicit emphasis on feeling, simplicity, and the pleasure of beauty over rhetoric, ornament, and formality changes the course of English poetry, replacing the elaborate classical forms of Pope and Dryden with a new Romantic sensibility. Many pastoral poems, such as Daffodils, Written in March, Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Tintern Abbey are the typical representatives of Wordsworth’s style. Wordsworth becomes the dominant force in English poetry while still quite a young man.
Besides the beauty of nature, the principle object then proposed in these pastoral poems is to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate and describe them. The reason why Wordsworth selects the low and rustic life as the theme of his pastoral poems is that in that condition the essential passions of heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity. And the pastoral poems are written in the common language really used by men as far as possible.
In Chinese literature, the high status of Tao Yuanming mainly owes itself to his fine pastoral poetry. A pioneer to write the rural life and the beauty of nature, he paves the path for the later poets. All of Tao’s poems are fresh, natural and plain in both theme and language, especially the poems of Back to Country, Drinking Wine (the Fifth), Matching a Poem by Secretary Guo, Moving Houses and the like. The Tang poetry is under the direct influence of Tao Yuanming, especially the pastoral poems by Wang Wei, Meng Haoran, and Liu Zongyuan. From the Song Dynasty on, Tao Yuanming’s personality and works are held in very high esteem. Since the Song Dynasty, “plainness” and “naturalness” have become the fixed attributes to Tao Yuanming’s poems, and Tao Yuanming has occupied an important place in the history of Chinese literature.
Though far apart in time and space, Wordsworth and Tao Yuanming have cut a new path in poetry writing in their respective literature. The two pastoral poets share one essential characteristic both in their poetical content and their poetical form—naturalness, which is also the common innovative point they have contributed to the development of pastoral poetry.
2. Wordsworth’s and Tao Yuanming’s Pastoral Poetry: Similarities
2.1 Way to Rural life
The period of reclusion plays an important role in the lives of both Wordsworth and Tao Yuanming. It is proved that they produce most of their well-known pastoral poems during their recluse time.
William Wordsworth lost his parents in his early age, and he was sponsored by his uncles to enter St. John's College, Cambridge at the age of seventeen. In 1790, before his graduation, he spent the summer on a walking tour in Switzerland, Italy and France. His travels on the Continent brought him in contact with the French Revolution, and he came under its spell, as did most of the enthusiastic young men of the time. Wordsworth was thrilled into human sympathy, and his hopes were stirred and his imagination fired with dreams of an ideal republic, which he fancied would arise from the Revolution. He said:
I gradually withdrew
Into a noisier world, and thus ere long
Because a patriot; and my heart was all
Given to people, and my love was their
(The Prelude, Book Ⅸ)
As Wordsworth burned with the enthusiasm for the French Revolution, Tao Yuanming bore his great ambitions in mind. In Tao’s youthful days, he was taught by the Confucianism to serve the emperor. “A good scholar can become an official.” Tao was also influenced by his honored ancestors. His great grandfather, Tao Kan, was a famous general with great military achievements in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and both his grandfather and father also secured official positions. Tao Yuanming was so proud of his great grandfather that he once wrote a poem to express his admiration:
My grandfather was a prudent man
Discreet all over his life-span
He held his office fair and square
And showered favors here and there
(Naming My Son)
So in his early age Tao Yuanming was eager to achieve his fame like his great grandfather by serving the emperor.
Both Wordsworth and Tao Yuanming possessed great aspirations in their youthful days. When Wordsworth was prepared to dedicate himself to the struggle, his relatives recalled him to England to face the ugly specter of poverty. The rude shock came too suddenly upon his ardent aspirations, and, closely following it came the failure of the revolutionists — Girondins. Wordsworth was so depressed and disappointed. Back in England, he published his first two poems in 1793: An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches, which were conventional, picturesque descriptions of the Alps. His disillusionment with the French Revolution was reflected in his verse drama The Borderers.
Tao Yuanming’s official career lasted probably more than ten years from 393 to 405. During these years, he was so fed up with the officialdom that he resigned from the position of the magistrate of Pengze (彭泽令) which he had taken up for only over eighty days. This was the year when Tao Yuanming really embarked on his way to his recluse life. Tao Yuanming failed to achieve his ambitions in his official career, he inevitably longed for the tranquility of the rural life.
It can be said safely that the irreconcilable conflicts between the harsh realities and the ideals cause Wordsworth and Tao Yuanming to retreat from the public life and to return to nature. The harsh realities frustrate the ambitions of both poets and hurt them deeply, and the experiences actually influence both poets’ poetic writing all through their lives.
2.2 Themes in Pastoral Poetry
The number of poems about the beauty of nature is in the majority in both Wordsworth and Tao Yuanming’s pastoral poetry. Wordsworth settles in the picturesque Lake District in the north of England, and Tao Yuanming lives in his beautiful hometown of Chaisang (present-day Jiangxi Province). They are attracted and shocked by the beauty of nature, and they cannot help singing praise of it.
In Wordsworth’s opinion, nature is worthy of being respected because she, just like the merciful “mater”, fosters men and all creatures in the world. Wordsworth’s love of nature is vividly presented in such poems that sincerely praise the little beings, such as To the Daisy, To the Cuckoo, The Small Celandine, The Green Linnet and the like. In the poem To the Daisy, Wordsworth writes:
Bright Flower! Whose home is everywhere
Bold in maternal Nature’s care
And all the long year through the heir
Of joy or sorrow
Wordsworth thinks that the Daisy’s boldness and joy originate from the “maternal Nature’s care”, and that nature can bring the little creature the vital force. In fact, the daisy has turned to be the embodiment of nature.
In The Course of Nature, Tao Yuanming directly speaks out his feelings for nature. In the Preface to The Course of Nature, Tao says: “The Course of Nature is written when I am on an outing in late spring. In my newly-made spring clothes, I wander alone the thriving fields, with mixed feelings of weal and woe.”
Along with nature’s changing course
A fair spring day displays its force
In spring attire I leave my home
And to the eastern fields I roam
(The Course of Nature)
This poem describes vividly the late spring sceneries and Tao’s delight at the sight of the beauty of nature. All the clouds, hills, dim horizon, breezes and the seedlings in this poem convey the information of spring, and complete a flourishing picture of spring.
It is not only the beauty of nature but also the rustic life that attracts Wordsworth and arouses his creative enthusiasm. The rural life strongly excites Wordsworth’s feelings of loving. Wordsworth’s motives to glorify the “low and rustic life” are that the rural life can provide “the essential passions of the heart” with “a better soil”, and that “a plainer and more emphatic language” can be spoken. The poems of We are Seven, Lucy Gray, She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways and The Solitary Reaper are typical of the theme of “low and rustic life”, in which Wordsworth praises the people who are close to nature.
Tao Yuanming is a farmer as well as a pastoral poet. So he often writes about his own farming life in his pastoral poems, such as Exhortatio