The River Merchant's Wife Analysis
Chinese and Japanese literature dominate throughout the ages because of the profound meaning each word in every piece contains. Every one of their literary creations figuratively reveal the fascinating yet cruel reality of the world that include both positive and negative characteristics. Li Po’s “The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter”, Li Ch’ing-Chao’s “Peonies”, and Tu Fu’s “Jade Flower Palace” all encompass similar motifs of beauty and time, yet they also include other unique topics that help contribute to the essence of each poem. While all three compositions convey time as the primary reason for the decay of beauty, it also raises a couple of questions: What is the price of beauty? How is time represented in each piece? Why is time the greatest …show more content…
The prince of the palace certainly once had a magnificent home with a luxurious life befitting of his status, but presently, he befalls a fate of being abandoned by time. While the palace itself remains, the sovereignty, wealth, and beauty it symbolized becomes no more. Time ultimately holds the greatest power because if a palace and prince as resplendent and imperially powerful as this could be forgotten by time, how does anyone or anything else stand a chance? When the author says “The future/ Slips imperceptibly away./ Who can say what the years will bring?” shows the obscurity of the future and the fear of being forced into a bitter destiny that one has no way to control (Fu, 18-20). The debris of the palace that once was great gives an insight on what awaits people in the future, and it sets a negative perspective of what will eventually come--the destruction and death of everyone and everything. No one can create something that will last forever and there is no hope in trying to preserve or capture something beautiful because it will pass its time in the world and eventually deteriorate until all that is left are traces of what once
Lan Cao's Excerpt From Monkey Bridge
458 Words | 2 PagesBoth of these uses of figurative language and the imagery that they consist of help to paint the picture of Cao’s love of english. The tone of this passage also contributes to that. By using words such as “poetry”, “perfection”, and “astonishing” the excerpt appears light hearted and
The Woman Warrior Sparknotes
1084 Words | 5 PagesTold through the story of two sisters reuniting, Moon Orchid and Brave Orchid. This chapter also has underlying messages of shame and misogyny. For me personally, the last chapter made all the other talk stories and myths make sense. This is when the story truly clicked for me, and I started to understand the confusing journey of a Chinese-American girl. That’s why for this essay I plan to discuss chapter 5 “A Song for A Barbarian Reed Pipe.”
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Death In The Jade Peony
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Story Of The Stone Chapter 3
719 Words | 3 PagesWang Xiefeng is described in a poem with “eyes like a painted phoenix, eyebrows like willow-leaves”(Xueqin 549) and wearing a “chignon enclosed in a circlet of gold filigree and clustered pearls. It was fastened with a pin embellished with flying phoenixes, from whose beaks pearls were suspended on tiny chains” (Xueqin, 549). The poem used to describe Wang Xifeng’s face paints a picture of a gentle beauty and contrasts the behavior of Wang Xifeng. It makes the readers feel as if she is really ethereal and the comparisons
Comparing The Chinese Seamstress And The Handsomest Drowned Man
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Character Analysis Of The Wife Of Bath
1052 Words | 5 PagesThe Wife of Bath: An Analysis of Her Life and Her Tale The Wife of Bath’s Prologue stays consistent with the facts that experience is better than the societal norms, specifically those instilled by the church leadership. Chaucer uses the Wife of Bath to display the insanity of the church, but through switching and amplifying their view of men and chastity onto the opposite gender. The church doctrine at the time held celibacy in an idolized manner, forgetting the inability for humans to ever reach perfection, or live up to this standard. They also did not hold women in a high regard at all, again this is where Chaucer flips the role, as the Wife of Bath describes her five marriages in her prologue, essentially describing each as a conquest, where the result is her having all control.
Gender Roles In The Merchant Of Venice
1635 Words | 7 PagesChristie Yeo Qing Wen Professor Kevin Riordan HL1002: Survey of English Literature I 6 November 2015 The Deception of Gender In The Merchant of Venice, deceptive façades are reinforced by Portia’s seeming subjugation to male rule, but in truth, her status as an empowered female who maintains her autonomy and ultimately outwits and subverts the authority of the patriarchal Elizabethan society.
Compare And Contrast The Wife Of Bath's Tale
399 Words | 2 PagesThe Wife of Bath and her tale are the most similar out of all the tales because they both share a domineering outlook over others. In the general prologue she is told to have had five husbands and is described as a looker, “Her face was bold and handsome and ruddy,” (Chaucer 39). In her prologue she goes more in depth of her time spent with her five husbands. Wife of Bath talks most about how she gains control over her husbands. For instance, her fifth husband was the controlling force in their marriage until he made the mistake of hitting her and telling her he would do anything to keep her with him and said, “My own true wife, do as you wish for the rest of your life…” (335).
Comment Wang-Fu Fut Sauve Analysis
1011 Words | 5 PagesThe two important themes that I identified within this extract are beauty and love. Firstly, beauty is conveyed via descriptions of Ling’s wife. This is evident in the line “ une épouse et la prit très belle”. I think that the beauty of the wife mirrors the appreciation for aesthetics that is clearly evident in the text as if the wife herself, was as beautiful as one of Wang-Fô ‘s paintings. The latter theme is evident in the love for his wife as well.
Matsuo Bashō's The Narrow Road To The Deep North
957 Words | 4 PagesThroughout time, literature has had the power to connect readers around the world by providing them with insight into different cultures. Readers may come together by analyzing different texts and how they represent different backgrounds and give readers from a different culture a new perspective. Matsuo Bashō, a haikai master, provided readers with an insight into Japanese culture by depicting his travels around Japan in his work “The Narrow Road to the Deep North”. In the text, Bashō depicts his journey with the use of prose and haiku. Most importantly, Bashō educates readers by demonstrating the Japanese culture’s value for impermanence, the idea that time is transient.
Legendary On The Sea Analysis
1702 Words | 7 PagesThe signification here shall not be misunderstood as his allegiances switched to another political regime, but rather as a suspension from conventional order, and to propose a more opening spatial definition, incorporating and highlighting those at the margin of the discourse. As the Chinese title of the film, the Legendary on the Sea, is a mimicry of Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Flowers on the Sea [Flowers of Shanghai], Jia pays tribute to Hou who in the interview introduces the interesting anecdote that Flowers of Shanghai was actually shot in Taiwan, implying identity and historical memory are not constrained in a certain geographical area, but inherited and adapted by people in different localities. That is to say, Shanghai can be everywhere, and everywhere can be Shanghai. Transforming from “Shanghai” to “Hai Shang” [literally meaning “on the sea”] by reversing morphemes, they treat Shanghai, more as a starting point of storytelling than a concrete centre, and destruct the binary opposition between the centre and the margin. Their filmmaking then, becomes “the second of leaping up” when the carnival begins and the “beggar” is
When I Was Growing Up Poem Analysis
1299 Words | 6 PagesThe theme of shame and regret that the speaker feels about her longings to be white is given strength by employing the literary devices such as diction, imagery, and symbolism. As the poem develops, she explores her feelings and expresses her shame of longing to be white, yet still, she cannot shed her “yellow” skin (38). She is and always will be Asian by
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