Zhuangzi purports to follow a particular method of viewing human emotion and suggests freeing oneself from worldly emotions—this is called “doctrine of non‐emotion” (wuqing shuo 無情說). This article attempts to show that the idea of non‐emotion in Zhuangzi does not in any way conflict with the expression of emotion in poetry, and moreover, it provides a foundation for the poet to express his emotions naturally and freely. We will use the Chinese poetry of the Wei‐Jin Period—a period that is strongly influenced by the philosophy of Zhuangzi, yet at the same time emphasizes the expression of the poet's emotion in poetry—as an example to show how fruitful it indeed is when Zhuangzi's philosophy becomes applied to Chinese poetry.
Zhuangzi purports to follow a particular method of viewing human emotion and suggests freeing oneself from worldly emotions—this is called “doctrine of non-emotion” (wuqing shuo
). This article attempts to show that the idea of non-emotion in Zhuangzi does not in any way conflict with the expression of emotion in poetry, and moreover, it provides a foundation for the poet to express his emotions naturally and freely. We will use the Chinese poetry of the Wei-Jin Period—a period that is strongly influenced by the philosophy of Zhuangzi, yet at the same time emphasizes the expression of the poet’s emotion in poetry—as an example to show how fruitful it indeed is when Zhuangzi’s philosophy becomes applied to Chinese poetry.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.