The Evolution of Ancient Poetry

The evolution of China's poetic forms. Judging from the existing historical data, China's earliest poems are included in the Book of Songs in the 6th century BC. Among them, most poems are four words and one sentence, and the other part is long and short sentences with different words. Judging from the number of clauses, both four-character poems and long and short poems are more or less inconsistent. Since the works in The Book of Songs are the earliest poems in China, the works in The Book of Songs are also the earliest poems in China. In the 3rd-4th century BC, Chu Ci written by Qu Yuan, Song Yu and others was handed down. The form of Chuci is that the number of sentences is uncertain and the number of words in a sentence is different. The auXiliary words "xi", "you" or "only" are added in the sentence or at the end of the sentence. Since the Han Dynasty, four-character poems and Chu Ci have been replaced by five-character poems and one five-character poem. At that time, there was no limit to the number of five-character poems, which could be long or short. Later people called it a five-character ancient poem. At the same time, there are Yuefu poems, five-character poems and long and short sentences. In the Three Kingdoms, Cao Pi wrote two complete seven-character poems. Seven-character poetry did not become popular until Qi and Liang Dynasties, and the rhythm of poetry began to sprout during this period. Later, in the early Tang Dynasty, the form of modern poetry had been established. Since then, the forms of five-character modern poetry and seven-character modern poetry have been preserved, juxtaposed with classical poetry that is not restricted by metrical rules. Modern poetry can be divided into quatrains and metrical poems. Each quatrain poem is limited to four sentences, and metrical poems are limited to eight sentences. Another arrangement method, also called long method, is not limited by the number of sentences, but only needs to maintain the rhythm of modern poetry, which can be ten to hundreds of sentences. From the end of the seventh century to the middle of the eighth century, that is, before and after the opening of Xuanzong in the Tang Dynasty, the literary form of Ci gradually took shape. From the Five Dynasties to the Song Dynasty, Ci was in its heyday. After the death of Song Dynasty, the popular form of poetry in Yuan Dynasty was Sanqu. Sanqu is divided into two categories: a poem and several songs. The number of songs is also called the number of songs. Poetry is just a song, and the number of songs is composed of several songs. The form of Qu is close to that of Ci, and the main difference between Qu and Ci is that rhyme is more flexible and colloquial than Ci. Before the appearance of new poetry, there was no new poetic form in China.