Life
| Names | |
|---|---|
| Chinese: | 杜甫 |
| Pinyin: | Dù Fǔ |
| Wade-Giles: | Tu⁴ Fu³ |
| Zi: | Zǐměi 子美 |
| Also known as: | Dù Shàolíng 杜少陵 Du of Shaoling Dù Gōngbù 杜工部 Du of the Ministry of Works Shàolíng Yělǎo 少陵野老 Shīshèng, 詩聖, The Saint of Poem |
| Du Fu | |||||||||||||||||
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| Chinese | 杜甫 | ||||||||||||||||
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| Hangul | 두보 | ||||||||||||||||
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| Hiragana | とほ | ||||||||||||||||
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Traditionally, Chinese literary criticism has placed great emphasis on knowledge of the life of the author when interpreting a work, a practice which Watson attributes to "the close links that traditional Chinese thought posits between art and morality". Since many of Du Fu's poems prominently feature morality and history, this practice is particularly important. Another reason, identified by the Chinese historian William Hung, is that Chinese poems are typically extremely concise, omitting circumstantial factors that might be relevant, but which could be reconstructed by an informed contemporary. For modern Western readers, "The less accurately we know the time, the place and the circumstances in the background, the more liable we are to imagine it incorrectly, and the result will be that we either misunderstand the poem or fail to understand it altogether". Owen suggests a third factor particular to Du Fu, arguing that the variety of the poet's work required consideration of his whole life, rather than the "reductive" categorisations used for more limited poets.
Read more about this topic: Du Fu
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