The so-called characteristics of folk songs refer to the characteristics of "hungry people sing about their food and laborers sing about their affairs" in content; In the expression structure, it has the characteristics of "constant chapters and sentences, repeated singing"; It has distinctive and colorful features in language style. The characteristics of folk songs in The Book of Songs have had a far-reaching impact on the development of later poetry, and become the source of the realistic tradition of China classical literature.
Judging from the content, these poems with the characteristics of folk songs in The Book of Songs basically reflect the people's living conditions and thoughts and feelings, either describing their pains of hard work all the year round, or eulogizing their love, or expressing their dissatisfaction with the oppressors. For example, justice in Cut Tan asks, "No crops, no crops, no crops." If you don't raise or hunt, is there a county badger in Huzhan Pavilion? "There is a shocking power.
Judging from the performance structure, most of these poems with the characteristics of folk songs in The Book of Songs are repetitive. Many repeated chapters in The Book of Songs are all overlapped by the same chapter, and only a few words are changed to express the process of action or the change of mood. For example, "Tell me, I have no food!"
""
Vole, vole, don't eat my wheat! ""master mouse, master mouse, don't eat my seedlings! "It is the representative of this repetition.
From the perspective of language style, the spread of The Book of Songs in the pre-Qin period was mainly oral, with the characteristics of popular literature. The language form of The Book of Songs is vivid and colorful, which can often achieve "twice the result with half the effort" and "a thousand emotions". The language of these folk songs not only has musical beauty, but also has a good effect in ideographic and rhetoric.