Du Fu is one of China's most celebrated and influential poets. His poems about paintings are a highly innovative subset of poems rich with imagery and emotion. Received ideas about these poems fail to account for any role played in them by Du's aesthetic ideas. This study analyses Du's poems about paintings in order to bring to light Du's theory of art. Du's theory of art combines ancient Chinese ideas about aesthetics, literature and the nature of humanity's relationship to the universe. These traditional ideas serve as the foundation for a unique theory. Du's theory of art posits the painter as a higher being whose paintings have magical qualities as a result of his mastery of the craft of painting and the richness of his inner world.

Korean calligraphy went through tremendous changes during the twentieth century, and Jung Hyun-bok (1909-1973), a gifted calligrapher, played an important role in bringing about these changes. This thesis focuses on one of Jung's most mature and refined works, "Using the Peak of the Five Elders as a Brush," owned by the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. In addition to translating and explicating the poems on the screen, through a close examination of both the form and content of the work I explore how it reflects Jung's values, intentions, and background. This thesis also addresses the question of why some critics have classified Jung as a professional artist and considers some of the ways in which he actually cultivated and projected an image of himself as a traditional literatus.

The present work offers a critical analysis of Tao Qian’s political and religious thought from readings of his poetic works. Focused on Tao Qian’s writings about the “Way” and the crisis of the “Way”, I examine how he constructs his political utopia and religious utopia that stand out as his response to the multidimensional existential crisis. Chapter 1 provides a summary of Tao’s depictions of the “Way” and the crisis of the “Way”, which serves as the textual ground of this study. Chapter 2 introduces the interdisciplinary methods that I have adopted to read and understand Tao Qian. Basically this study is informed by ideas and insights from modern disciplines of political thought and religious studies. Chapter 3 focuses on Tao Qian’s political utopia and discloses the philosophical traditions and personal innovations of Tao's political thought. Chapter 4 introduces Tao Qian’s religious utopia, with focus on how he manifests the sacred world and how he proposes to get to the sacred.

Si les Poésies de l’époque des Thang (1862) de Hervey-Saint-Denys est apprécié des savants et des poètes, le Livre de Jade (1867) de Judith Gautier touche les non-spécialistes et diffuse la poésie chinoise en Occident. Regardé du point de vue de la poésie classique chinoise, le Livre de Jade porte plusieurs transformations : le changement du lyrisme à la narration, la perte inévitable des images et des formes poétiques classiques chinoises. Considéré du point de vue de la poésie française du XIXème siècle, le Livre de Jade porte les grands thèmes lyriques du romantisme et manifeste les récents développements du Parnasse : son enthousiasme pour le poème en prose et son goût pour la peinture. A la fin nous prendrons à la fois le point de vue de la poésie classique chinoise et celui de la poésie romantique française. Bien que le Livre de Jade possède deux caractéristiques communes à ces deux poésies, nous n’y trouvons pas de point de rencontre idéal. Tant de différences par rapport aux poèmes originaux justifient les réticences, depuis son apparition, à considérer Le Livre de Jade comme une traduction. Nous nous proposons de considérer ce livre du point de vue de la première rencontre poétique entre la France et la Chine. A travers cette rencontre, ces deux poésies se renvoient leur image comme un miroir l’une de l’autre et, ce faisant, leur fait découvrir ce qu’elles ne voyaient pas de leur propre culture. / If Hervey-Saint-Denys’s Poésies de l’époque des Thang (1862) have touched French sinologists and men of letters, the Judith Gautier’s Livre de Jade (1867) properly initiated classical Chinese poetry into the vision of the Western reader. Seen from the perspective of classical Chinese poetry, Poésies de l’époque des Thang can be taken as a reference for the Livre de Jade about what scholars and poets have in common when translating poetry. This demonstrates the influence and limitation that the Chinese and French languages, cultures, and literary traditions exert on poetic translation. Examined from the perspective of the 19th-century French poetry on the other hand, the Livre de Jade possesses qualities of romantic themes, but it also bears Parnassian imprints in its imitation of the newly emerging prose poetry and its transplantation of ideas of painting. Besides, in analyzing the two obvious features of the Livre de Jade, namely its abundant metaphors and the omnipresence of nature, this thesis juxtaposes French romantic poetry keen on figures of speech, especially metaphor, with classical Chinese poetry immersed in its tradition of bi-xing. The above analysis reveals that the Livre de Jade is by no means translation in the strict sense of the word. However we might regard it as the first encounter between Chinese and French poetry which enables them to reflect and rediscover each other before they finally merge into one.

Notre thèse est consacrée à la réception de la poésie chinoise classique chez les poètes français à travers notamment les anthologies. Elle est divisée chronologiquement en trois parties. La Partie I couvre la période 1735-1860, antérieure à la première anthologie de poésie chinoise et où il n’est donc question que de morceaux choisis. Nous estimons que cette partie est indispensable sur les plans à la fois historique et comparatif. Sans elle, nous apprécierions peut-être moins l’arrivée des anthologies et leur contribution à l’évolution de la réception de la poésie chinoise chez les lecteurs-poètes. La Partie II commence par la parution de Poésies de l’époque des Thang. Nous débutons ainsi par un aperçu général des anthologies parues entre 1862 et 1949. Puis nous abordons la traduction de cette période et les anthologies majeures. Nous entrons par la suite dans le vif du sujet qu’est la réception de ces anthologies chez les lecteurs-poètes, tels que Paul Claudel, Segalen et Saint-John Perse. La Partie III concerne la période 1953-2008. Nous abordons d’abord la diffusion et la traduction des anthologies de cette période. Puis nous parlons en détail des trois sortes d’anthologies produites par les traducteurs professionnels, les sinologues et les poètes, sans oublier de réserver un chapitre à des anthologies majeures. Enfin, nous étudions les poètes contemporains qui lisent la poésie chinoise traduite avec leurs différentes modalités de réception. Dans la réception, le plus intéressant n’est peut-être pas de connaître la poésie chinoise classique mais bien de s’interroger sur la façon dont les poètes français l’interprétèrent. Nous espérons avoir pu répondre à cette interrogation à travers le long parcours historique déployé dans cette thèse. / This thesis addresses the reception of Classical Chinese poetry by French poets, particularly by means of anthologies. It is organised chronologically in three parts. Part One covers the period 1735–1860, before the first anthology of Chinese poetry, and is therefore concerned only with excerpts. An understanding of this first period is essential if we are to appreciate the significance of the anthologies that followed, and their role in the changing reception of Chinese poetry by reader-poets. Part Two begins with the publication of the anthology Poésies de l’époque des Thang. After a general overview of the anthologies published between 1826 and 1949, there is a more detailed account of translation practices over this period, and of the most influential anthologies. It is then possible to address the central issue of this thesis: the reception of these anthologies by reader-poets, such as Paul Claudel, Victor Segalen and Saint-John Perse. Part Three is concerned with the period 1953–2008. Following an account of the dissemination and translation practices of anthologies from this period, there is a detailed discussion of the three types of anthologies produced by professional translators, Sinologists and poets respectively, and a further chapter is devoted to the most influential anthologies. Finally, a study is made of contemporary poets who read Chinese poetry in translation, and of their different forms of reception. This reception is of interest, not so for much for what it tells us about Chinese poetry itself, but rather for the way it has been interpreted by French poets. The long historical trajectory of this thesis provides an important insight into this interpretation of Chinese poetry.