What does Qu Yuan's vanilla beauty mean?

"Vanilla Beauty" refers to the idea of loyalty to the monarch and patriotism. Wang Yi's Preface to Li Sao in Han Dynasty vividly summarizes the creative art of Qu Yuan's Li Sao and compares it with Zhou's Li Sao. He thinks that his artistic techniques, such as "vanilla" and "beauty", inherit Zhou's poems in origin, which is similar to the satirical spirit of the poems, so it is called "Yi Shi".

But the difference is that Qu Yuan's "vanilla beauty" is not only an artistic rhetorical device, it is an important part of his active romantic creation art by telling stories, rendering characters, weaving his art palace with gorgeous myths, expressing his strong feelings and expressing his loyalty to the monarch and patriotism.

Extended data:

The theory of "vanilla beauty" has a great influence on later generations. Tracing back to the source, we can see the traces of Qu Yuan's Li Sao. For example, Changzhou Ci School in Qing Dynasty used "vanilla beauty" and "floating clouds in the wind" to express "sustenance" in order to discover the subtle meaning in its works.

So it gradually extended from the principle of artistic creation to the field of literary criticism and aesthetics. Although sometimes it is inevitable to be far-fetched, from the general theoretical tendency, the theory of "sustenance" develops and deepens the artistic realm of poetry.

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