Constructing a System of Irregularities (PDF)

This book investigates the poetics of three of the most internationally renowned contemporary Chinese poets - Bei Dao, Yang Lian and Duoduo - who were all exiled from China after the 1989 Tiananmen student movement. Their poetry was later to be labelled 'Misty poetry' (Menglongshi). Emphasising polyvalent imagery and irregular syntax, Misty poetry engenders a multiplicity of meanings, often leading to interpretational indeterminacy. This book examines three aspects of the 'Mistiness' of the poets' oeuvre: the socio-historic background where Misty poets live and write; imagery; and linguistic elements. After first identifying the roots of Mistiness, this book identifies imagistic and linguistic clues in order to construct a hermeneutical system that examines the irregularities of the Misty poetics and appreciates the polysemy of the poets' works. Stylometry is used to analyse image frequency and its significance in a stylistic manner, and a semiotic approach is then systematically applied to analyse the poets' highly irregular images, syntax and the different effects of their poems' obscurity. Through these approaches that unveil the poems' evocativeness, the irregularity of the poetry's Mistiness is established as its most powerful linguistic and imagistic aspect. The book then places the three poets' different misty characteristics into contrast: Bei Dao's twisted imagery and elliptical syntax, Yang's imagery in a classically-inspired syntax, and Duoduo's integration of images into a rhythmic syntax. While the poets' progressions from pre- to post-exile poetics suggest the potential of a non-nationally specific, or borderless poetics, their seemingly irregular poetic Mistiness is the most powerful trait of Misty poetry for evoking its system of multifaceted significations and alternative aesthetics.