inter-stratal tension

Constructing a System of Irregularities: The Poetry of Bei Dao, Yang Lian, and Duoduo

Feb 18

ChRIS CLÉiRIGhbook publication No Comments

Title: Constructing a System of Irregularities
Subtitle: The Poetry of Bei Dao, Yang Lian, and Duoduo
Publication Year: 2016
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
http://www.cambridgescholars.com/

Book URL: http://www.cambridgescholars.com/constructing-a-system-of-irregularities

Author: Chee Lay Tan

Hardback: ISBN: 1443880264 9781443880268 Pages: 290 Price: U.K. £ 47.99
Hardback: ISBN: 1443880264 9781443880268 Pages: 290 Price: U.S. $ 81.95

Abstract:

This book investigates the poetics of three of the most internationally
renowned contemporary Chinese poets – Bei Dao, Yang Lian and Duoduo – who were
all exiled from China after the 1989 Tiananmen student movement. Their poetry
was later to be labelled ‘Misty poetry’ (Menglongshi). Emphasising polyvalent
imagery and irregular syntax, Misty poetry engenders a multiplicity of
meanings, often leading to interpretational indeterminacy. This book examines
three aspects of the ‘Mistiness’ of the poets’ oeuvre: the socio-historic
background where Misty poets live and write; imagery; and linguistic elements.

After first identifying the roots of Mistiness, this book identifies imagistic
and linguistic clues in order to construct a hermeneutical system that
examines the irregularities of the Misty poetics and appreciates the polysemy
of the poets’ works. Stylometry is used to analyse image frequency and its
significance in a stylistic manner, and a semiotic approach is then
systematically applied to analyse the poets’ highly irregular images, syntax
and the different effects of their poems’ obscurity. Through these approaches
that unveil the poems’ evocativeness, the irregularity of the poetry’s
Mistiness is established as its most powerful linguistic and imagistic aspect.

The book then places the three poets’ different misty characteristics into
contrast: Bei Dao’s twisted imagery and elliptical syntax, Yang’s imagery in a
classically-inspired syntax, and Duoduo’s integration of images into a
rhythmic syntax. While the poets’ progressions from pre- to post-exile poetics
suggest the potential of a non-nationally specific, or borderless poetics,
their seemingly irregular poetic Mistiness is the most powerful trait of Misty
poetry for evoking its system of multifaceted significations and alternative
aesthetics.