Reinterpretation on Wang Guowei’s Youmei and Hongzhuang

Abstract

In Wang Guowei’s famous poetics work, Ren Jian Ci Hua (人间词话) (1908), he distinguished two categories of Chinese classical aesthetics—youmei (优美), or the beautiful, and hongzhuang (宏壮), or the magnificent, which appeared in the fourth paragraph that Wuwozhijing (无我之境) (worlds without I) can be obtained in the tranquility of nature. Generally regarded as the last master of Chinese Classical Poetics, Wang Guowei had tried to take Chinese traditional poetics discourse and to combine it with the connotation of Western aesthetic theory, rather than simply using Western classical poetics theory to interpret and judge Chinese classical literature or theories.