On the Differences between Tang Poetry and Song Poetry

I'm glad to answer this question. Tang poetry and Song ci are the two most beautiful flowers in the garden of Chinese culture. There are similarities and differences between Tang poetry and Song poetry. Let's talk about the difference today.

First of all, times have changed. Tang poetry developed on the basis of Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties and reached its peak in the Tang Dynasty, producing great poets such as Li Bai, Du Fu, Shi Fo and Wang Wei, as well as four outstanding poets in the early Tang Dynasty and ten gifted scholars in the middle Tang Dynasty. At the same time, there are many schools, such as landscape pastoral poetry and frontier poetry. Song Ci developed on the basis of the late Tang Dynasty, Five Dynasties, Quzi Ci and Huajian Ci, and reached its peak in the Song Dynasty. The graceful and restrained school and the unrestrained school gave birth to famous poets such as Su Dongpo, Liu Yong, Li Qingzhao, Zhou Bangyan, Ouyang Xiu and Xin Qiji.

Secondly, the form is different. Poetry has a fixed form. Tang poetry has five words and seven words, quatrains, metrical poems and other formats. Need a higher level of training and confrontation. The metrical restrictions of words are even stricter. The form of Song Ci is mainly the difference of epigrams. Every word should be filled in according to the fixed rules of the epigraph, and there are strict training restrictions. Generally speaking, the form of Tang poetry is relatively fixed, while Song poetry is quite different, with different words and more musical and rhythmic sense.

Thirdly, the emotional expressions of Tang poetry and Song poetry are different. The ancients said that poetry expresses ambition, and words must have love. In other words, Tang poetry generally expresses orthodox ideas, such as the ambition to serve the country and the ideal of life. Ci is a form of folk music, so it generally expresses private and secret feelings. Therefore, even in the early Song Dynasty, there was no way for Ci to enter the elegant hall, and literati were generally embarrassed to write Ci, thinking that this was a way. It is the pronoun Li Yu who really pushed Ci from the folk to the temple, and Su Dongpo who turned Xia Liba's Ci into an elegant literati's Ci and greatly expanded the expression of Ci. Since then, Song Ci has become the main tool for literati to express their feelings!