Literary travels in China during the Tang dynasty

Abstract

The article discusses literary travels in the historical period of the Tang Dynasty, which entered the history of the country as a period of flourishing culture — science, painting, literature, and especially poetry. Two great Chinese poets Li Bo and Du Fu created during this period. Literary and cultural-geographical approaches to the study of travelogues developed in Western, Chinese and Russian literary geography are presented. The historical and cultural contexts of literary travels are discussed. The cultural and historical specificity of the travelogues of the Tang Dynasty period is that many of them were made not out of interest in learning new lands and cultures, but out of necessity. For the most part, the authors of travelogues were applicants for the position of an official who had to submit a literary work at the state exam. Routes, vehicles, stopping places and other elements of travel are analyzed. The role of literary travel in the development of literature of the period under consideration is discussed. Special attention is paid to the anisotropy, or the disparity of different directions, of the cultural space of China of this historical epoch. This is due to the historically low cultural status of Southern China compared to other regions. Travelogue materials reflect this cultural phenomenon well.

References

1. Wang Yiping. 2015. Study of maritime trade and shipping during the Tang dynasty through the trade porcelain of the Changsha kilns]. National maritime research, no. 4, pp. 78–86. (In Chin.)

2. Vedenin Yu.A. 2022. Kul’turno-geograficheskiy podkhod k izucheniyu literaturnykh puteshestviy [Cultural and geographical approach to study literary journeys]. Heritage and modern times, no. 5 (3), pp. 232–257. (In Russ.)

3. Kalutskov V.N. 2021. Yuzhanin v Sibiri: literaturno-geograficheskoye issledovaniye puteshestviya A.P. Chekhova (na materiale ocherkov A.P. Chekhova “Iz Sibiri” I yego putevykh pisem) [The southern man in Siberia: a literary and geographical study of Anton Chekhov’s journey (based on Chekhov’s essays ‘from Siberia’ and his travel letters)]. Geographical Bulletin, no. 3 (58), pp. 74–91. (In Russ.)

4. Li Dehui. 2003. [Transport and literature in the Tang dynasty]. Changsha: Hunan People’s Publishing House. (In Chin.)

5. Li Dehui. 2021. [Transport of the Tang Dynasty — the triangular structure of literature and its significance]. Literary Studies of the Tang Dynasty, no. 1, pp. 171–187. (In Chin.)

6. Literaturnaya geografiya Rossii: atlas-spravochnik [Literary geography of Russia: atlas-reference book]. Scientific. ed. Yu.A. Vedenin, V.N. Kalutskov. M.: Moscow University Press, 2022. (In Russ.)

7. Morozova M.M. 2020. Zarubezhnaya literaturnaya geografiya: osnovnyye napravleniya issledovaniy [Foreign literary geography: the main research areas]. Moscow State University Bulletin. Series 19: Linguistics and intercultural communication, no. 2, pp. 150–156. (In Russ.)

8. Russkiy travelog XVIII-XX vekov: marshruty, toposy, zhanry i narrativy: annotirovannyy ukazatel’ [The Russian travelogue of the XVIII–XX centuries: rout, locus, genre and narrative]. ed. T. I. Pecherskaya. Novosibirsk: Nemo Press, 2018. (In Russ.)

9. Zeng Daxing. 2017. [Introduction to Literary Geography]. Beijing: The Commercial Press. (In Chin.)

10. Zhang Juan. 2015. [Research on the origins of tourism in the Tang Dynasty and its social impact]. Lantai World, no. 15, pp. 26–27. (In Chin.)

11. Yao Fan. 2019. [A Study on Tang dynasty hotel poems: a thesis for the degree of master]. Hunan University of Science and Technology. (In Chin.)

12. Piatti B. 2009. Mapping Literature: Towards a Geography of Fiction. Сartography and Art, pp. 1–16. (In Eng.)