Modern Social Science Research

The Wei and Jin dynasties were an era marked by a profound sense of life, as well as an age when the self-awareness of literati first began to awaken. Among the literati of this period, Cao Pi is highly representative and also a key figure in Jian’an Literature. Taking life consciousness as the starting point, this paper employs the methods of documentary research and case analysis, and examines the political, cultural and living contexts in which Cao Pi lived to analyze the origins of the formation of his life consciousness. A study of the life consciousness reflected in Cao Pi’s fu writings reveals that his life consciousness is chiefly manifested in three aspects: temporal anxiety over the essence of life, solitary experience of existential state, and sorrowful chanting of life emotions. Breaking away from the Han dynasty grand fu tradition of rhetorical grandiloquence and ornate diction, Cao Pi turned to composing numerous short lyrical fu to express his personal sentiments. In his fu works, he mainly employs techniques such as the fusion of feelings and scenes and the multi-faceted portrayal of lyrical protagonists to lament his difficult predicament in political struggles, sigh over the brevity of life and the passage of time, or grieve over the miserable lives of the general populace.The creative shift from “describing objects” to “expressing emotions” laid a solid foundation for the emotional turn of later Jian’an Literature.

Cao Pi; Fu poems; Life consciousness; Literature of the Jian’an period