The Liang dynasty poet Xiao Gang’s “poems on things” (yongwu shi) have traditionally been read as shallow, overwrought descriptions of palace life devoid of the allegorical dimensions that were thought to ennoble the genre. This thesis argues that the figurative dimensions of these supposedly non-figurative poems must be understood in the context of the profound influence Buddhism and Buddhist thought had on Xiao Gang’s conceptions of literary practice. Through close readings of six “poems on things,” I demonstrate that Xiao Gang’s use of descriptive language doubles as an exploration of Buddhist concepts of sensuous reality, emptiness, and dependent co-arising. By exploring Xiao Gang’s thematization of abstract Buddhist philosophical concepts in the traditionally Confucian genre of the yongwu shi, I suggest that the impact of Buddhist ideas on Chinese figurative modes of poetic meaning was more profound than scholars of this period have previously suggested.

Sericulture has been a part of Chinese culture since ancient times. The silk dress was a symbol of the social privileges of the educated elite and the court. On the other hand, silk production and silk processing were also part of the everyday life of common villagers. For Chinese society, silk was an important material both economically and culturally. This diploma thesis analyzes how various aspects of life in Tang society, which were connected to silk, are portrayed in the works of the middle Tang poets Wang Jian 王建 (cca. 751-830) and Bai Juyi 白居易 (772-846). This paper identifies various themes and describes meanings that silk as a literary motif helps to express.