THE ORIGINS AND SIGNIFICANCE OF “FATE” IN THE HAN DYNASTY FU POETRY OF ZHAO YI
THE ORIGINS AND SIGNIFICANCE OF “FATE” IN THE HAN DYNASTY FU POETRY OF ZHAO YI

Summary/Abstract: The present study aims to elucidate the meaning and shed light on the origins of the concept of “fate”ming 命 as it is expressed in a well-known poem by Zhao Yi, a poet that lived during the Han dynasty (202BC-9AD). “Mocking the Ills and Evils of the World” 刺世疾邪赋 belongs to the Chinese genre of fu 赋 poetry.The particular expression related to the concept that appears in the poem is present in a context given by a supposed encounter of the author with anonymous travellers whose popular wisdom had a deep influence on his way of writing. The present research seeks to glean evidences from similar sources of folk songs and poetry like the Book of Songs Shijing 詩經 or the Records of the Great Historian Shiji 史記 and offer insight into the way that people during that age perceived the society and the surrounding world by tracing back the origins of the concept to the archaic strata of Chinese literature and establishing the nature of the relationship that it has with the later developments of Taoist thought. The results show that the Han poetry, with Zhao Yi as a foremost representative constituted a crystallisation of earlier views that found lyrical echoes in a period of great upheaval and change.

• Details
• Contents