The Documentary Narrative of Women’s “Poetry History” in the Late Qing Dynasty and the Construction of War Image

The Opium War which brought the Qing Empire into a period of wars,had totally changed the life trajectory of female poets’, and brought new opportunities for their poetry creation. They inherited the “poetry history” tradition in the history of poetry, recorded the great changes of the country and the individual’s sufferings through a large number of war-torn poems, which reflected a strong tendency of documentary narrative. In their poems, they used a large number of notes, prefaces, and self-notes, which focused on highlighting the characters, created an environment, conveyed specific ideas, tried to construct a kind of nuanced, real and sensible war images, then maximized the function of poetry narrative. In those poems, the writing of suffering of family and feelings of worries, sadness, pains, hates, etc., showed strong personal and gender characteristics.