Confucian Prophet: Political Thought In Du Fu’s Poetry (752–757) ...

Du’s representations of these realities in his poetic settings both lend his work its vivid realism and also provide rich contexts for the actions and descriptions of the various characters who appear in these poems. Most prominent among these, of course, is Du himself, who as a persona appearing in the poems takes on a number of representational roles. He represents the Tang literati as a whole, a member of the minister-official component of the political class of the time, and a public servant. As a family man, Du also represents the head of a household, father, and husband, while his wife and children stand for the family in the abstract, the family of a literatus, and, to the extent that his family suffers with those of the common people, for all the suffering families of the empire. The actions of these personas and characters and the manner in which they are described, within the constraining political conditions in which they are placed, have implications for political thought. The way Du presents himself in these works is only to a certain extent a self-portrayal. His actions and descriptions of himself comment on the class of people he represents. The same may be said about his family, his friends, and his associates, as well as the other characters in the poems that stand for court officials and other actors in the political world of the times.

Du’s realism and his vivid representations of life as it is are the elements of his poetic diction that make his social and political critiques so powerful and compelling. On their own they make great poetry. But they force upon the reader political questions, and they suggest political ideas when they are read and defined in connection with the wider field of political discourse, Pocock’s authority structure, and Lewis’s textual realm. Although natural realism itself is conditioned by the conceptual world of language, it is through deeper levels of figuration and allegory that the connections between Du’s realism and the textual culture become manifest. It is at this level of language that one can see the standards in the tradition of political thought that impart meaning to the political critiques embedded in Du’s realistic representations.