Abstract
This thesis is to study FANG XIAO-RU’s poems. I would like to inform the influence to the latter poets and also the content, patterns and skills which he used in his poems.
FANG XIAO-RU （1357A.D-1402A.D）was born and dead in the Hong-Wu Dynasty（1368A.D-1398A.D）. He thought he was the classical Confucianist. He was the advocate of manners but he lived in the dynasty which executed cruel tortures. Therefore, my study will start from his childhood to the achievement of becoming the Master in poetry. (Huang Tsung-Hsi called him the first Confucianist of the early Ming Dynasty.) I will also inform his ideas, teachers and friends.
As for the content of his poems, it covered from many different kinds of poems. For instance, poems for the emperors, history stories, poems on the paintings, poems to describe an object, poems to express people’s feelings, poems about the nature and human beings. We can see that he was such a sensitive, free and gentle poet. In the forms of art, my study starts from the rhetoric of forms and the rhetoric of content to discover the beauty of his poems.
His poems told the human beings and the care for all the mankind. They also revealed the social style. He insisted on Confucianism and good behaviors and manners which have influenced the later period a lot. He used natural wording but still showed strong feelings. FANG XIAO-RU’s poems are highly valued and are a great treasure to all of us.
