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Ch'en Tzu-ang (661-702) is known to have been the first poet in the T'ang dynasty who openly expressed discontent over effeteness in poetry and advocated the return to the seriousness of the Han-Wei style. Some of his poems contain veiled criticisms of the regime of the Empress Wu (624?-705), while others bear equally serious themes. His precepts proved very influential and were greatly appreciated in the whole of the dynasty. His achievement in the poetic form, likewise, was duly recognized by poets after the T'ang dynasty, when the formal aspects of poetry were given fervent study. Section I of this thesis begins with a prologue discussing the reign of the Empress, which shaped the career and works of Ch'en Tzu-ang as such. Then it deals with the life and career of the poet. In it a great many incidents which have a direct bearing on Ch'en's social and political poems are included. The mystery which surrounds Ch'en's death is also examined. This section ends with a general appraisal of the poet's political philosophy. Section II begins with a survey of the poetic scenes of the pre-T'ang and early T'ang period, as a background to Ch'en's poetics, which were then examined in detail. This is followed by an analysis of the Kan-yu poems, which were greatly responsible for the poet's fame. Other poems of a similar nature are also discussed. To complete the study of his poetic attainments, some of the poet's regulated poems as well as his syntactic and tonal techniques in poetry are analysed. Section II, and the whole thesis, is concluded with a collection of appreciative references to the poet by the T'ang literati, and a suggestion of the social factors which brought him to his position.

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Poetry translation evaluation from ancient Chinese to English has been subjective in China. This is caused by the indefinable and intangible notion of ‘poetic spirit’, which is often used in influential translators’ criteria, and by the lack of a systematic investigation of translation evaluation. The problem of subjective criteria has remained unresolved for nearly a century. In order to improve the subjective criteria of poetry translation evaluation, this thesis is an attempt to make objective evaluations of the English translations of an ancient Chinese poem using stylistic theories. To make an objective criticism, it is necessary to offer evidence which is based on systematic and reliable criteria and replicable evaluation procedures. By applying stylistic theories to both the source text and the target texts, it is possible to make a judgement based on the stylistic features found in the texts themselves. Thus, objective evaluation of poetry translation from ancient Chinese to English can be made. This research is qualitative with the data consisting of one ancient Chinese poem as the source text and six English translations as the target texts. It carries out stylistic analyses on the data with two approaches based on the cognitive stylistic concept of figure and ground and the linguistic stylistic theory of foregrounding. The target texts are judged by the evidence of locative relations and foregrounding features. This research also explores and proposes a practical framework for poetry translation. The research findings suggest how to make objective poetry translation evaluations and improve translation techniques. They also point out the need to integrate stylistics with translation evaluation to make improvements in the field.

Many people in the past praised Chinese literature partly because of the glamour revealed in splendid poetry, and in creating these poetry male poets have proved their excellence. Conversely the contributions of women poets have seemed much less significant in the history of traditional Chinese literature. Among the relatively small number of famous women poets in China, Zhu Shuzhen (11357-1180?) is certainly worthy of discussion, but she has not received much critical attention, in part because of the lack of reliable biographical information. Although some of Zhu Shuzhen's poems have been seen by some scholars as disgraceful, it is nevertheless valuable to explore the inner world and poetic indications of the voice projected from the poems in an objective way. However, as the number of poems attributed to Zhu Shuzhen is large, despite living under an atmosphere that discouraged the writing of poetry by women, her name is undoubtedly significant in the development of female poetry. Western theories of gender representation and the development of self in literature have been used as the main sources and frameworks for research in this thesis. The aesthetic values in Zhu Shuzhen's original verse have been retained through my translations by selecting the best appropriate original versions in different editions. Comparisons between Zhu Shuzhen and Yu Xuanji fa, (8447-868?), a woman poet in the Tang Dynasty, reveal similarities and differences which distinguish the two in terms of their resistance to the code that cast women as inferior. This thesis will analyse Zhu Shuzhen's ambivalent mind as revealed in her poetry through her contradictory statements, ideas and images regarding the notion of being a good wife on the one hand, and, on the other hand, of a woman suspected of conducting an extramarital affair.

My thesis closely analyzes the shi poetry of the Song dynasty philosopher Zhu Xi (1130-1200). I look at its deep structure, especially the tensions embedded therein between literature and philosophy, and between his inner mind and the external world, manifested in ways different from what he taught in his philosophical works. Although his poetry itself is not considered to be aesthetically outstanding, I suggest that it is crucial to a better understanding of the evolution of Zhu’s philosophical project on the relationship between humans and the natural world. Zhu Xi wanted to establish and defend a coherent and practical self-cultivation theory, which would enable people to recognize the dao through daily experiences. Nevertheless, in his poetry production, he was facing a long-entrenched influential poetic tradition with its emphasis on the outer world described by embellished words and spontaneous overflow of emotions, while leaving an open end for the meanings or less discriminatively appealing to the Daoist or Buddhist idea of transcendence, the logic of which fundamentally contradicts that of daoxue construction. This made it impossible to achieve the dao in a this-worldly fashion. The contradiction had to be reconciled by Zhu Xi in his poems, an issue that he actually wrestled with throughout his life. Consequently, the style of Zhu Xi’s poetry was differentiated from both that of other Neo-Confucians and indeed that of any other poets in Chinese history. In his poetic texts, the tension between the outer world, inner emotions and philosophical inclination is more intensified, and the exploration of the relationship between man and nature more focused and conscious. In this thesis, I present an aesthetic world of Zhu Xi beyond all his ambiguous philosophical discussions, unfavorable comments on poetry, and his profoundly contradictory attitudes towards versifying.

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