Phonetic Aesthetics:Liu Xie's Theory on the Law of Sound in Literary Writings
The chapter Law of Sound(《声律》)in The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons《文心雕龙)by Liu Xie(刘勰)discusses the principles and rules of phonetic beauty in literary writings,which can be called phonetic aesthetics.In Liu Xie's discussions,the concept and framework of phonetic aesthetics are based on the traditional theory concerning the law of music(音律).Liu Xie believes that all sound phenomena have common characteristics and laws.Based on this idea,musical sound and speech sound,as sound phenomena,have common principles.And the beauty of speech sound and the beauty of music also have common principles,so they can share the same theoretical basis.Since the theory of music had long been established in China,Liu Xie based himself on the universal principle of sound,used the principle of music to discuss the principle of speech sound,established the aesthetics of speech sound with musical aesthetics,and took the aesthetics of speech sound as a level of his aesthetics of overall writings.As phonetic beauty involved the constituent elements of speech sound and their combination methods,Liu Xie put forward the combination rules of phonetic elements on the basis of such musical aesthetic concepts as"harmony"(和)and"resonance"(应).Liu Xie regarded a piece of writing as an audible text with musical beauty,conveying the author's emotions and intentions through reading aloud and recitation.A competent reader can understand and reconstruct the author's sound through the text,and appreciate the music it conveys in the course of reading aloud and recitation.In Liu's theoretical system,the"audible literary writing"(声文)is a basic category of"literary writing"(文).In a piece of literary writing,sound is its basic constituent element,and it is also one of the basic characteristics of the writing's beauty.
Liu Xie(刘勰)law of sound(声律)law of music(音律)speech soundaesthetics
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