Chinese rhapsody poetry (fu) of the Western Jin dynasty (a. d. 264/5-317)

In the course of the reign of the Western Jin Dynasty (264/5-317) the qualitatively new milestone in the history of Chinese lyrical poetry ( Shi ) is steadily correlated in both the old Chinese humanities, and modern world sinology studies. In those times, rhapsodies ( Fu ) held a significant standing among literary activities; as proved by the multitude of works (over four hundred) and traditional attitudes to it. However, the study of Western Jin’s rhapsody heritage started relatively recently by Chinese scholars, and remains little known in Russian sinology. This publication presents the first attempt to analyze Western Jin rhapsody poetry. It contains factual data and analysis of concrete works of leading masters in the area, and of formal, thematic and ideological peculiarities of Western Jin's rhapsody poetry. It is argued that study of this field expands the currently available knowledge оf those days’ spiritual life, cultural, ideological, literary processes and of individual poets’ creative range.