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Ary Scheffer (February 10, 1795 - June 15, 1858), French painter of Dutch extraction, was born at Dordrecht. After the early death of his father, a poor painter, Ary was taken to Paris and placed in the studio of Guérin by his mother, a woman of great energy and character. The moment at which Scheffer left Guérin coincided with the commencement of the Romantic movement. He had little sympathy with the directions given to it by either of its most conspicuous representatives, Sigalon, Delacroix or Géricault, and made various t ...

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Traditionally, Chinese literary criticism has placed great emphasis on knowledge of the life of the author when interpreting a work, a practice which Watson attributes to "the close links that traditional Chinese thought posits between art and morality" (p. xvii). This becomes all the more important in the case of a writer such as Du Fu, in whose poems morality and history are so prominent. Another reason, identified by the Chinese historian William Hung, is that Chinese poems are typically extremely concise, omitting circumstantial factors ...

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Du Fu, Du Fu - Life, Du Fu - Early years, Du Fu - War, Du Fu - Chengdu, Du Fu - Last years, Du Fu - Works, Du Fu - History, Du Fu - Moral engagement, Du Fu - Technical excellence, Du Fu - Influence, Du Fu - Translation

Read more here: » Du Fu: Encyclopedia II - Du Fu - Life

There have been a number of notable translations of Du Fu’s work into English. The translators have each had to contend with the same problems of bringing out the formal constraints of the original without sounding laboured to the western ear (particularly when translating lǜshi), and of dealing with the allusions contained particularly in the later works (Hawkes writes that "his poems do not as a rule come through very well in translation" — p. ix). One extreme on each issue is represented by Kenneth Rexroth’s One Hundred P ...

See also:

Du Fu, Du Fu - Life, Du Fu - Early years, Du Fu - War, Du Fu - Chengdu, Du Fu - Last years, Du Fu - Works, Du Fu - History, Du Fu - Moral engagement, Du Fu - Technical excellence, Du Fu - Influence, Du Fu - Translation

Read more here: » Du Fu: Encyclopedia II - Du Fu - Translation

In his lifetime, and immediately following his death, Du Fu was not greatly appreciated. In part this can be attributed to his stylistic and formal innovations, some of which are still "considered extremely daring and bizarre by Chinese critics" (Hawkes, p. 4). However, as Hung notes, he "is the only Chinese poet whose influence grew with time" (p. 1), and in the ninth century he began to increase in popularity. With time, his innovations began to seem less radical, and hindsight could appreciate the historical aspects of his poems better th ...

See also:

Du Fu, Du Fu - Life, Du Fu - Early years, Du Fu - War, Du Fu - Chengdu, Du Fu - Last years, Du Fu - Works, Du Fu - History, Du Fu - Moral engagement, Du Fu - Technical excellence, Du Fu - Influence, Du Fu - Translation

Read more here: » Du Fu: Encyclopedia II - Du Fu - Influence

Criticism of Du Fu's works has focused on his strong sense of history, his moral engagement, and his technical excellence. Du Fu - History. Since the Song dynasty Du Fu has been called by critics the "poet historian". The most directly historical of his poems are those commenting on military tactics or the successes and failures of the government, or the poems of advice which he wrote to the emperor. Indirectly, he wrote about the effect of the times in which he lived on himself, and on the ordinary people of China. As Watson notes, this is information "of a kind seldom found in the officially compiled h ...

See also:

Du Fu, Du Fu - Life, Du Fu - Early years, Du Fu - War, Du Fu - Chengdu, Du Fu - Last years, Du Fu - Works, Du Fu - History, Du Fu - Moral engagement, Du Fu - Technical excellence, Du Fu - Influence, Du Fu - Translation

Read more here: » Du Fu: Encyclopedia II - Du Fu - Works