A Study on Envy and Jealousy Revealed in Tang Dynasty's Poetry

This paper examines jealousy and envy reflected in Tang Dynasty's poetry. There were countless works in Tang poetry describe the situation that their authors' talents could not be recognized or they were relegated due to slander. Unlike them, some people succeed in their official careers without any difficulties due to relationships or mere luck. This difference in experience easily aroused envy and jealousy of unrecognized poets. However, if they directly expressed this kind of emotion without concealment, it would have easily made their readers regard those works superficial and vulgar. Therefore, it was necessary to express it through certain rhetorics. This article focuses on the analysis of the Tang poems which employ these rhetorics and contain the word “羨, (xian, envy)”. It aims to explore the relationship between the poets' envy, jealousy and the main ideas of their poems, the poets' tactful way of revealing envy and jealousy, and the poets' methods to overcome the negative emotions brought by envy and jealousy. In addition to using literary analysis, this paper also uses the psychological knowledge about envy and jealousy to study the poems containing these emotions for more objective and scientific research.