Among the newly unearthed epitaphs, there are about 20 that are related to Li Bai and his poems. We use these epitaphs to confirm the ancient stone inscriptions and historical biography literature to discuss Li Bai’s life, friends, and marriage, to interpret Li Bai’s poems and to explore his influence. These epitaphs can provide materials for observing Li Bai and methods for interpreting poetry at a specific level. First, we can investigate Li Bai’s whereabouts in the Rebellion of An Lushan and Shi Siming through newly unearthed epitaphs. For example, the recently unearthed He Changhao Epitaph not only provides clues for the writing year of Li Bai’s poem For Assistant He Changhao but also presents the relationship between Li Bai and Song Ruosi. It reveals the information of Li Bai’s whereabouts between Li Lin’s destruction in defect in the second year of Zhide and Li Bai’s exiling to Yelang. Secondly, we can explore the relationship between Li Bai and ancient prose movement pioneers such as Li Hua, Han Shenqing and Han Yunqing. Because of Li Bai’s achievements on poems, people normally attribute his revivalism to poem writing and the influence of poetry. In fact, through the study of the newly unearthed epitaphs of some ancient prose writers like Li Hua and in reference of Li Bai’s poem Pei Shiyu Shu Hua Denglou Ge, we can further explore Li Bai’s revivalism and essential links with ancient prose writers of that time. His revivalism thoughts also had a certain influence on ancient prose movements in the middle period of the Tang Dynasty. Moreover, we can verify Li Bai’s poetry through unearthed documents. Li Bai had a wide range of friends during his lifetime, which was reflected in his poetry. These works match with the materials found in the newly unearthed documents. Those friends were He Zhizhang, Zhao Yue, Dou Gongheng, Liu Wan, Wei Bing, Lu Xuzhou, Lu Xiang etc. The newly unearthed documents are important proofs for interpretation of Li Bai’s works. Finally, we can promote the research on Li Bai and the literary history of the Tang Dynasty through the descriptions of the newly unearthed epitaphs’ influence on Li Bai. The newly unearthed epitaphs narrating Li Bai’s influence are Liu Fu Epitaph and Pei Yan Epitaph. For the former, Liu Fu’s creative process started from studying Confucian Classics, then history and finally literature to achieve mastery through a comprehensive study of literature, history and philosophy. These were closely associated with Li Bai’s influence on him. For the latter, in the late Tang Dynasty not only did Li Bai’s poetry become an import object for young learners to learn and imitate, but also Li Bai and Li He were mentioned together in epitaph, which will help us explore the origin of the Two Li named together and the significance of the literary history of this phenomenon.
胡可先. 新出文献与李白研究述论[J]. 浙江大学学报(人文社会科学版), 2015, 1(5): 5-20.
Hu Kexian. A Summary of Newly Unearthed Epitaphs and Studies of Li Bai. JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY, 2015, 1(5): 5-20.