'Drinking wine' by Tao Yuanming

Thesis abstract The aim of this thesis is to show the basic meanings of wine (jiu 酒) in some of Tao Yuanming's poems, titles of which contain the word 'wine'. The first chapter of the present work concerns itself with the main question of the thesis as well as the theoretical approaches towards the interpretation of the Chinese poetry and gives a brief biography of Tao Yuanming and the intellectual background of his works. The second chapter with its detailed interpretation of all the poems from Tao Yuanming's series 'Twenty Poems After Drinking Wine' (Yin jiu ershi shou 飲酒二十首) represents the main part of the work. The third chapter is dedicated to the poems 'On Stopping Wine' ( Zhi jiu 止酒) and 'An Account of Wine' (Shu jiu 述酒). The second and third chapter also include an annotated translation of all of the poems into Czech. In the case of the poem 'An Account of Wine', it is the first translation to the Czech language so far. The two remaining chapters deal with the motif of wine and its various meanings in the above-mentioned poems. The work shows that the motif of wine in Tao Yuanming's poems can carry different meanings that might be divided into several categories. Those categories of the motif of wine correspond to the poet's attitudes to life as presented by his works