Exploring the cross-cultural influence of song Jiangnan Chan Buddhist poetry on Goryeo Han poetry through text visualization

Abstract This study examines the influence of Jiangnan Chan poetry on Goryeo Han poetry through a comparative analysis of three representative poets from four dimensions: vocabulary imagery, spatiotemporal deconstruction, thematic evolution, and emotional expression. It proposes a text visualization-based methodology employing Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF)-based keyword extraction, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA)-based topic modeling, and sentiment analysis, supplemented by neologism mining and Kimi Intelligent Assistant (KIMI)-based word segmentation using AI large models. The results reveal four key findings: (1) both poetries share similar vocabulary and imagery centered on nature and Chan Buddhism; (2) both reflect an interweaving of eternal perspective and historical consciousness, alongside a dialectic between cosmic vastness and human reality; (3) in terms of thematic evolution, the original focus on “Nature and Chan” in Jiangnan poetry was transformed in Goryeo Han poetry into a trinitarian framework of “national protection, Dharma propagation, and social salvation”; and (4) Jiangnan poetry emphasizes transcendence and emptiness, while Goryeo Han poetry incorporates depictions of secular life and historical memory. The findings also suggest that the proposed methodology is effective in improving the accuracy of Chinese word segmentation for ancient poetry texts. This study underscores the value of quantitative comparative analysis in visualizing the intercultural diffusion and transformation of Chan Buddhism poetry.