This study explores a new approach to reading classical Chinese poetry by actively incorporating the conditions of the contemporary visual age. The author begins from the observation that the experience of reading Tang poetry often resembles that of watching a film, and builds upon previous tentative discussions on the relationship between poetry and cinema. Focusing on thirty-seven poems selected from Tang Poetry: Three Hundred Poems, specifically five-character quatrains and yuefu poems in quatrain form, this paper seeks to analyze how poetic scenes are constructed through visual perception. The central question of this study concerns whether the poem is primarily structured around human figures or landscapes (including objects). When a poem centers on human figures, the analysis distinguishes between cases in which the figure functions as an object of observation and those in which the figure coincides with the poetic speaker, resulting in different modes of scene construction. In poems dominated by landscape or objects, the same analytical framework is applied to examine the position and perspective of the speaker. Furthermore, this study addresses the issue of distance between figures and landscapes, examining whether the two are closely related, fused into a single entity, or remain independent. Through this process, a group of poems that cannot be adequately explained by simple binary classifications is identified. By integrating the key concepts of figure, landscape, speaker, viewpoint, and distance, this paper proposes a visual and cinematic framework for interpreting classical Chinese poetry. This approach not only deepens textual interpretation by treating poems as dynamic visual compositions rather than static texts, but also suggests pedagogical possibilities. In particular, it demonstrates the potential for interactive teaching methods that employ digital media, image production, and discussion-based learning in contemporary educational contexts.
Eui-jeong Kim (Sat,) studied this question.