The Syntax and Poetic Vision of Tang Pentasyllabic Regulated Verse

This article is a systematic study on the syntactical innovations in Tang pentasyllabic regulated verse and explore their profound aesthetic significance. It first sets forth three basic sentence patterns: the simple subject-predicate, the complex subject-predicate, and the topic+comment. Next, it identifies, under those three patterns, ten most noteworthy sentence types in the Tang regulated verse. By comparing each type with their predecessors in the Six Dynasties poetry, the author seeks to determine whether it is an evolution of a pre-Tang sentence type or an entirely new invention while describing its distinctive features. The last section of the paper synthesizes all the findings and shows how Tang poets, through comprehensive syntactical innovations, not only attained the aesthetic ideal of ' Well-rounded and beautiful, flowing and turning” (yuanmei liuzhuan) that has eluded their predecessors, but also created a suprasensory poetic vision hitherto unknown to Chinese poetry.