The literature of the Song Dynasty was fully developed, with great achievements in poetry, lyrics and prose. The master who made prose flourish in the Song Dynasty and inherited the ancient prose movement was Ouyang Xiu. Ouyang Xiu's prose has clear themes, substantial content, and is easy and natural, setting the tone for the prose style of the Song Dynasty. Among the three Sus, Su Xun's articles are good at discussion, and his writing style is majestic and simple. Su Shi's articles are free and easy, fresh and bold yet tinged with melancholy. His articles such as "Red Cliff Ode" and "Red Cliff Ode" confirm his unshakable position in the literary world. His disciples were also quite promising. Chen Shidao, Huang Tingjian, Qin Guan, Zhang Lei, Chao Buzhi and Li Ying were known as the "Six Gentlemen of Su Clan".
During the Southern Song Dynasty, Su Shi's prose even became a model essay for the imperial examination. People at that time said: "If Su Wen is familiar with it, he eats mutton; if Su Wen is unripe, he eats vegetable soup." Su Che's articles are less about narrative and more about discussion. Zeng Gong faithfully followed Ouyang Xiu's style, focusing on narratives and argumentative essays. The writing style is natural and simple, with few flowery words. Wang Anshi is also good at argumentative writing, with a vigorous and natural style. But after crossing to the south, the prose of the Song Dynasty began to decline, and subsequent literati could not compare with the six writers of the Northern Song Dynasty."[148] Yang Wanli's poems are fresh and lively, focusing on natural scenery; Fan Chengda's poems are concerned about people's livelihood and have a poetic style Lu You's poems are elegant and graceful; Lu You's poems are famous for their patriotism. His poems have neat parallelism, and later generations said that "the good couplets are used up by the poor" [149]
Although Song poetry is not as good as Tang poetry, it is far ahead of Ming Dynasty. During the Qing Dynasty, the "Complete Poems of the Song Dynasty" was being compiled, which included more than 160,000 poems from the Song Dynasty. Like prose, Ouyang Xiu also pioneered the poetry style of the Song Dynasty. The first poetry talk in the history of Chinese poetry, "Liuyi Poetry Talk", was among them. Written by Wang Anshi, whose poetic style is more sophisticated than Ouyang Xiu's, he pays more attention to rhetorical techniques and the use of allusions. [150]
Su Shi's poems are varied and unrestrained, and he absorbs the techniques of all previous poets and excels in them. These poetic styles, especially the ancient style and the seven-character modern style, are unique, unrestrained and smart, and have become a major generation of Song poetry. Although Huang Tingjian came from Suzhou, he founded the Jiangxi Poetry School. His poems imitated Du Fu and paid attention to refined characters and sentences. , which seems intriguing. Later, there were the "Four Great Masters of the Southern Song Dynasty", namely Yang Wanli, Fan Chengda, Lu You and You Bao, who were also comparable to the three masters of the Northern Song Dynasty.
Ci is the abbreviation of Quci, also known as long and short sentences. According to the records of "Complete Song Ci", there are 1,330 poets in the Song Dynasty, and the total number of poems and fragments is more than 20,400. Yan Shu is called a Song Dynasty poet. The first ancestor, his poems are gentle and bright. Ouyang Xiu's poems are also rich in the style of Huajian School. Liu Yong played a turning role in the development history of Song Dynasty Ci. His slow poems are refreshing, confirming the status of long tunes and enriching the form of Ci. The works were so widely loved by the public that people at the time said, "Anyone who can drink from a well can sing Liu Ci" [152]
Later, Su Shi made a thorough study of Song poetry. With his innovations, he founded the bold style, expanded the scope of poetry selection, and laid the foundation for the later patriotic poetry of the Southern Song Dynasty. Zhou Bangyan was the ancestor of the Metric style, and the subsequent female poet Li Qingzhao also belonged to this group. Consciousness made the bold school occupy the dominant position in Ci. [153]
In addition, "talking" (storytelling) was very popular in the Song Dynasty, and the content of the speech was the Huabenyou. "Three Kingdoms Zhipinghua", "Newly Compiled Five Dynasties Shipinghua", "The Tripitaka of the Tang Dynasty", "The Legacy of Xuanhe of the Song Dynasty", etc.; some vernacular novels of the Ming and Qing Dynasties are also adapted from the scripts of the Song Dynasty.