Tonal Prosody in Three Poems by Wang Rong (Critical Essay‪)‬

I. INTRODUCTION This study is an exercise in reading the pentasyllabic poems of Wang Rong (467-93) by giving careful consideration to their tonal arrangements. Wang Rong was, as we are told in Zhong Hong's (466-518) Shi pin [Gradings of Poets], the person who initiated the literary movement in tonal prosody during the Yongming reign (483-93) of the Qi dynasty (479-502). (1) Although the movement led to "Recent Style Poetry" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], a new poetic genre that came into maturity in the Tang (618-907) and continued to be popular throughout the rest of dynastic China, it has been widely criticized in both traditional and modern studies. (2) Restrained by perspectives that are strongly influenced by the common understanding of Tang tonal prosody, many of these studies fail to recognize the complexity and value in the prosodic theories proposed by the Yongming poets. Accepting the prevailing belief that there were great discrepancies between their theories and actual writings, these studies also sought to understand their prosodic invention only at a conceptual level and rarely ventured into the works themselves. Focusing on Shen Yue (441-513) and Xie Tiao (464-99), they bring even less to light to Wang Rong's contributions or the originality of his poetics. Here I hope to suggest some new insights that may help in better understanding Wang Rong's poems as well as his idea of tonal prosody.