A Comparative Study of Yan Yu’s Exquisite Understanding (Miaowu) and James Joyce’s Epiphany

• Main Authors: Xiang-zhong Huang, 黃獻忠
• Other Authors: none
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/99294853200284426554

碩士 === 東吳大學 === 英文學系 === 97 === This thesis investigates the mystical understanding of poetic beauty of James Joyce’s epiphany and Yan Yu’s exquisite understanding (miaowu 妙悟). The attainment of poetic beauty relies on the dialectical interplay of one’s accumulated learning and artistic intuition. The process of aesthetic understanding involves the coalescence of mind and object and the due emphasis more on intuitive thinking than of rational thinking. The discovery of mystical understanding embraces philosophical and aesthetic dimensions. Chapter one explores the aesthetic categories –the correlatives of blankness and solidity, or xushi 虛實and poetic world (yijing 意境). They indicate that the poetic beauty consists of the fusion of material and spiritual form and it requires the reader’s creative imagination to depict the poetic world. Chapter two discusses the aesthetic fountainheads of Joyce’s epiphany and Yan Yu’s miaowu. Joyce was influenced by Aquinas, Wordsworth and Shelley. Yan Yu was indebted to Lu Jiuyuan. Chapter three focuses on the understanding of poets. The attainment of the poetic imagination is beyond egoistic considerations. Poets purify their minds to catch transient beauty of objects. Chapter four focuses on the understanding of readers. The achievement of reader’s understanding focuses on the discussion of Wang Fuzhi’s concept of “poetic presence” and Wang Guowei’s “the unveiled” (buge 不隔). It emphasizes the intuitive and present understanding of works instead of rational thinking, thereby entering the inner spirit of objects. Finally, we know that the maintenance of transient and flash beauty requires the observer’s aesthetic intuition and rational knowledge.