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A Study on Tang’s Poems of Examination Failure

  • The Journal of Study on Language and Culture of Korea and China
  • Abbr : JSLCKC
  • 2026, (79), pp.297~328
  • DOI : 10.16874/jslckc.2026..79.011
  • Publisher : Korean Society of Study on Chinese Languge and Culture
  • Research Area : Humanities > Chinese Language and Literature
  • Received : January 10, 2026
  • Accepted : February 20, 2026
  • Published : February 28, 2026

Dong Jin Kim 1

1한국세포주연구재단

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Modern people live their struggling lives in a competitive society where exams have become a daily reality. For the intellectuals of Tang Dynasty, the civil service exam was a decisive event that could shape their entire life, and those who failed were often left with despair, as if their past efforts in study had been completely denied. Some literati expressed their frustration and sorrow caused by this failure through literary creation, and this paper analyzes the result of such expression, known as "poems of examination failure." First, using corpus analysis tools like AntConc and Python, the main contents of the poems of examination failure were briefly summarized. Next, the study explored the methods poets used to alleviate the mental pain caused by their failure in the civil service exam. These methods included sharing emotions with close friends, forgetting the source of their pain, and escaping to the countryside. Finally, this paper also examined the rhetorical devices the poets employed to prevent their poems of examination failure from being perceived as mere lamentations of their hard fate. To begin with, they highlighted their lack of vitality and their miserable condition by describing the vibrant spring. Additionally, they used irony by declaring that the era they lived in was one of good governance, criticizing the unfairness of both the social conditions and the civil service exam system. Furthermore, they transformed the traditionally positive images of the capital city and the hometown into hostile spaces, intensifying the expression of their suffering. By dramatically contrasting themselves with those who passed the exams, the poets vividly conveyed their feelings of deprivation and envy. Through these rhetorical strategies, they were able to artistically elevate the sorrow of failure and effectively evoke empathy from their readers.

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