TRADITION–INNOVATION DIALECTICS AND POETIC EXPERIMENTS IN WANG GUOWEI’S POETRY

Abstract

The article examines the legacy of Wang Guowei, whose ideas produced a paradigmatic shift in Chinese literary and aesthetic thought in the early twentieth century. Emphasizing his integrative synthesis of classical Eastern philology with Western philosophy and aesthetics, the author highlights Wang’s view of literature’s intrinsic aesthetic value as primary and his critique of political didactic interpretations. The concept of jingjie (境界) is interpreted as the creation of a poem’s artistic world through the organic unity of emotion and landscape. In the traditional ci (词) genre, the “barrier” of ge (隔), arising from historical allusions and symbolism that distance the reader from the text, is explained with examples. The paper also theorizes the principles of “self” and “selflessness” in poetic perception and generalizes the criteria of emotional realism. As a result, this approach is shown to redirect Chinese poetics from a didactic model toward a philosophical aesthetic paradigm, providing a methodological foundation for modern literary studies and new poetry theories.