The purpose of this article is to explore the Song poetics of Qian Zhongshu, and to sort out his research results in Song poetics from his writings.It discusses the origins of Qian's Song poetics, from the inspiration of his family's education and the Western novels translated by Lin Shu, the exchange of ideas between teachers and friends, the cultivation of the Qing Confucian way of governance, to the origin of Qian's Song poetry criticism and research.
Qian Zhongshu's Song poetics is associated with traditional Chinese poetic discourse, and he inherited the Song poetic discourse style and wrote his book " Tan-yi-lu". Qian Zhongshu was concerned with the poetry of Yan Yu and Yuan Mei, and he praised and criticized these two books, showing how his Song poetics inherited and pioneered Yan Yu and Yuan Mei.
Having traveled across the world to study in England and to France, Qian applied Western phenomenology and hermeneutics to the study of Song poetry. His Song poetics is a fusion of Western theories and criticism, opening up a broader research horizon, focusing on phenomena, and constructing a history of the development of Song poetics with both contemporary and ephemeral observations. In terms of interpretation, the cycle of intertextuality, the interconnection and innovation, and the fusion of perspectives, the convergence of Western and Chinese academic thought, provide a more diversified research orientation and space for dialogue in Song poetics.
Inheriting traditional Chinese Shihua, Qian's Song poetics is distinctive in its use of phenomenology and hermeneutics, and is not a philosophical exploration of form, but rather a realistic inquiry, establishing a system of Song poetics based on Western theory.