Yue Xing

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

1993

Thesis Director

Michael Loudon

Abstract

My thesis focuses on a comparative study of Lao Tzu and Wordsworth concerning their quest for original creative power. Lao Tzu advocates Tao and reveals it as a way to eternity. Wordsworth calls for a return to nature and intends to create ever-lasting poetry. Despite their entirely different cultural backgrounds and a time span of more than two thousand years between them, both figures adopt a similar way of reversion whose key lies in the effort to move away from artificial human learning.

Submissiveness embodies the whole application of Lao Tzu's philosophy in the human world. It forms a contrast to the mundane idea of strength and power. Through submissiveness, human beings can gain authentic power and strength while artificial human maneuver only helps to achieve superficial ornaments.

A dedication to "lowly" people and their "lowly" language reveals Wordsworth's grief over artificial poetic creation and shows his resort to the animating principle for poetic revival. Like Lao Tzu, the poet uses the infant figure as an ideal model for the reversion process and points out that "The Child is father of the Man."

Lao Tzu and Wordsworth approach different issues of their individual eras, but both of them regard artificial human learning as the origin for either social or cultural problems. Their reversion is a return to the right recognition of the relationship between being and non-being and urges a quest for original creative power and its application in the poetic process.

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