The San-qu of Ma Zhi-yuan
Creators: name: Law, Louise Yi-Shu
Publisher: name: University of British Columbia
Year: 2010

description: This thesis is concerned primarily with the investigation of the thematic content and the stylistic elements that underlie the san-qu verse of the most distinguished Yuan san-qu poet, Ma Zhi-yuan and secondly with a study of his life. There are three main divisions in this thesis. The first chapter provides a biographical account of his life, relying chiefly upon Zhong Si-cheng's records in the Lu-gui bu, , and the apparently "autobiographical" contents of some of Ma's san-qu. It allso gives a brief introduction to the rise of Yuan san-qu, and the particular political and social milieu of this dark period of alien rule which, to a considerable extent, influenced the personal "escapist" philosophy of Ma, as well as the Yuan intellectual climate as a whole. The various Yuan, Ming and Qing anthologies which contain Ma's san-qu and the related issue of authentic authorship will also be discussed. In the second chapter, motives which recur frequently in Ma's san-qu -those of ubi sunt, the equation of life to a dream, fatalism, disillusionment with officialdom, fame, power and wealth, reclusion, carpe diem, oblivousness, and the attraction towards the supernatural - which represent Ma's personal philosophy, will be examined. The multiplicity of subject matter, tone and mood which characterizes Ma's poems, expressed in either the lyrical, descriptive or narrative mode, and embracing such polarities as the beautiful and the ugly, the elevated and the mundane, the private and public, the contented and the sarcastic, the lighthearted and the serious, the humorous and pathetic, the subtle and the garish will be included in this division. The third chapter, which explores the poetic language of Ma Zhi-yuan, is subdivided into the sections of diction, syntax and parallelism, images, versification and sound. In the first section, the wide spectrum of his diction - from colloquialism and prose-like diction to allusion and quotation - is noted, while his constant repetition and reduplication of words, and his inclination towards the use of certain words will also be examined. The second section of this chapter deals with some syntactic arrangements in Ma's san-qu that are of interest, such as his use of incomplete, composite and ambiguous lines, as well as kinds of parallel lines that he uses, the effects they achieve, and the context in which san-qu parallelism occurs. The third section focuses on the images that appear in Ma's san-qu. It includes the sources from which his images are drawn ,t the various functions of these images, such as for scene-setting, symbolizing, evoking emotions and creating sensory impact, and the different techniques of his compound images, such as juxtaposition, explicit and implicit comparison, substitution and transference. The fourth section of this chapter examines the sound elements of Ma's san-qu. It provides first an introduction of the prosody of Yuan san-qu and then the versification of Ma's poems which shows both his conformity to the peculiar features of the san-qu genre, as well as his skilful mastery of sound. Next, some sound devices that Ma employs such as internal rhyme, alliteration, reduplication and repetition of words, and onomatopoeia will be inspected. Finally, the overall achievement and contributions of Ma as a san-qu lyricist are evaluated, based on comments from both past and modern critics, and from evidence that arises out of the investigation in this thesis. Despite dissenting views that undermine his significance, the conclusion here still inclines to favor his foremost prominence as a san-qu poet.