A Comparative Study of the Image Wagtail in DU Fu’s and HUANG Tingjian’s Poems

The wagtail is a symbol of brotherhood in poems, which originated from The Book of Songs. From his own
experience, DU Fu broke through its original tragic color, and endowed it with happiness of brothers’ reunion and with friend- ship. On the basis of learning from DU Fu, HUANG Tingjian further widened the context of its use. The borrowing of images of both wagtail and swan goose embodied the poet’s thinking over his official career and life. The traditional image of wagtail has a variety of image connotations due to the poet’s subjective emotion in specific situation.