"Poetry" has been around since the emergence of Chinese writing, but the concept of "ancient poetry" first appeared in "Nineteen Ancient Poems", that is, during the Southern and Northern Dynasties. Nowadays, all poems written before 1840 can be called "ancient poems".
The origin is obviously in China, but the specific location is difficult to find out.
Let’s first understand ancient poetry (old-style poetry):
About old-style poetry, it can be divided into two major categories. One is old-style non-metrical poetry, or ancient style poetry, also known as ancient poetry. It's called Gufeng. For example, "The Book of Songs", "Chu Ci", Yuefu of Han and Wei Dynasties, etc., such poems are all non-metrical poems, that is, ancient style.
The other type is old-style metrical poetry, also called modern-style poetry. The number of words in each sentence may be five or seven characters, which are referred to as five-character or seven-character poems. A poem has four or eight sentences, four sentences are called quatrains, and eight sentences are called rhymed poems. In a poem, there are strict rules for the rhyme and rhyme of each line, and in a metrical poem with eight lines, there are strict requirements for the contrast between the four lines in the middle.
Before the Tang Dynasty when old-style metrical poetry was formally formed, the form of classical poetry in my country was non-metrical. For example, "The Book of Songs" is mainly composed of four words. The most classic one is "Guan Guan Jiujiu, in the river island, a graceful lady, a gentleman is fond of fighting". I think everyone knows this poem. This is the meaning of "The Book of Songs". Main features. However, there are also miscellaneous poems in the "Book of Songs" that range from one to nine words. There are no regulations on the number of words, level, rhyme, etc. of each poem. In "Chu Ci", 4, 6, or 8 words are mostly used, and the number of sentences is also different. There is no certain definition. For example, Qu Zi's "Li Sao" and "Nine Songs" are basically written in four, six or eight characters; "Yuefu" in the Han and Wei dynasties and various poems in the Southern and Northern Dynasties have five and seven characters. , and some used both; during this period, a new style of poetry with a slight rhythm began to be produced, which is the "Yongming style", such as a five-character and four-sentence poem similar to a quatrain. This small poem similar to a quatrain is the Gujue style. . At the same time, there are also modern styles of five-character and eight-sentence poems, but the rhythm of this new style of poetry is not strict, and there are almost no completely metrical poems. The form is also limited to five characters, which is not the same as the metrical poetry that was locked in the Tang Dynasty. It can only be said that the emergence of Gujue began to make the transition from non-metrical poetry to metrical poetry.
How did old-style metrical poetry develop?
First of all, ancient Chinese has many monosyllabic words and square characters, which are easy to form parallels. As early as the "Book of Songs" and "Chu Ci", many antithetical sentences appeared. In the Qi and Liang Dynasties, parallel prose became popular, prompting authors to pay attention to form and consciously emphasize the use of antithesis. Under the influence of this trend, it is natural to require the appropriate use of antithesis in poems. Duality is one of the factors that later formed the old style of metrical poetry.
Secondly, the tones of Chinese were discovered in the Middle Ages. At the end of Qi Yongming's reign, Shen Yue and others summarized the "four tones theory". Based on the characteristics of poetry that require a sense of rhythm and musical beauty, and through practical exploration, we concluded that poetry must have "different phonology in five characters, and different characters in two sentences." What does this sentence mean? That is to say, the poem must have different intonations among the five words in each sentence (that is, it must be divided into tones and obliques), and the rhythm cannot be the same between the upper and lower sentences. In the Tang Dynasty, the theory of "Eight Diseases" was formally proposed, which laid the foundation for the later flat and oblique rhythms of old-style poetry.
After the theory of "four tones" to "eight diseases" became popular, the four tones were then dualized and divided into two categories: Ping (flat) and Tik (up, come, enter). After understanding the concept of level and toe, he also gradually summarized the "leveling and toe technique" of each poem and the "gluing method" of connecting rhyme and couplets. , and found that using five or seven characters in each poem is more musically beautiful and the rhythm is more varied than using four or six characters. In a poem, both parallel sentences and prose sentences are used, which can also show the intricate beauty of language. In this way, after more than a hundred years of development from Yongming style, by the Tang Dynasty, rhymed poetry reached a stage of strictness and precision, and the form of old style rhymed poetry was finally fixed.
It should be pointed out that the emergence of old-style metrical poetry is an inevitable result of historical development. It was produced according to the characteristics of the Chinese language and the special requirements of poetry, and was not forcibly created by anyone. Therefore, once it was created, it had a very strong vitality that lasted for more than a thousand years until today. This is enough to show that the art form of old-style metrical poetry (including lyrics and music) has our national style and has a broad mass base, so it has such strong vitality. The original meaning of "ancient poetry" is poetry written by ancient people. Around the end of the Wei Dynasty and the beginning of the Jin Dynasty, a batch of five-character poems written by literati before the Wei and Jin Dynasties circulated. They have no titles and no authors. Most of them are lyrical poems with unique expression techniques and artistic styles, and are collectively called "ancient poems". Shen Deqian in the Qing Dynasty said: "Nineteen ancient poems are not necessarily written by one person, but were written at one time. They drove away ministers and abandoned their wives, had many friends, wandered in a foreign land, and felt a new connection between life and death. Some are allegories, some are explicit, some are repeated. . At first, there were no strange ideas or thrilling sentences, but the ancient poems of Xijing were all inferior to them." ("Shuo Shi □ Yu") In the Jin and Song Dynasties, these "ancient poems" were regarded as a model of five-character poetry. Lu Ji of the Western Jin Dynasty imitated 12 of them line by line. Tao Yuanming of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Bao Zhao of the Song Dynasty, etc. all had "Ancient Poetry" to study the techniques and styles of "ancient poetry".
By the Liang Dynasty, Liu Xie's "Wen Xin Diao Long" and Zhong Rong's "Shi Pin" theoretically summarized and commented on the artistic characteristics and value of "ancient poems", explored their authors, eras and origins, and generally determined that they were from the Han Dynasty work. At the same time, Xiao Tong's "Selected Works" and Xu Ling's "New Odes of Yutai" of the Chen Dynasty determined the scope of "ancient poetry" in terms of poetry classification: any work without a clear title is called "miscellaneous poetry" if it has an author, and "miscellaneous poetry" if it is unknown. "Ancient Poetry". Therefore, after Liang and Chen, "ancient poetry" has formed a special category name with a specific meaning. It is also known as the Yuefu Song Ci of the Han Dynasty. It specifically refers to the five-character poems written by unknown people in the Han Dynasty. It has also developed to generally refer to the artistic achievements of "ancient poetry".
A brief overview of the development of classical poetry
In order to facilitate everyone's understanding of the artistic characteristics of poetry and the classification of genres, let us first introduce the development history of classical poetry.
In the history of Chinese literature, the earliest poem we can see is the "Book of Songs" about three thousand years ago. This is the earliest collection of poems in our country, with 1***305 articles. , called "Poetry" or "Three Hundred Poems" in ancient times. Its content consists of three parts: "wind, elegance, and song", which are divided from the perspective of music. In terms of expression techniques, there are three types: "Fu, Bi and Xing". Therefore, the predecessors called "Feng, Ya, Song" and "Fu, Bi, Xing" the six meanings of "Poetry". In terms of language syntax, it is basically four words per sentence.
Following the "Book of Songs", in the fourth century BC, a new poetic style appeared in the Chu State called "Chu Ci". Its founder was Qu Yuan. Later, the Han Dynasty compiled the works written by Qu Yuan, Song Yu and others into a book called "Chu Ci". "Chu Ci" breaks through the four-character sentences of "The Book of Songs" and develops into five-character sentences and seven-character sentences, that is, it changes the even-character sentences (one sentence with four characters) into the sentences with odd characters (one sentence with five characters and seven characters), which not only can It expresses thoughts and feelings better, and the rhythm and rhythm are more musical.
In the Han Dynasty, poems sung to match music appeared, namely "Yuefu poems". In terms of language, there are four-character, five-character, and miscellaneous words, but most of them are five-character. After that, literati led by Cao Cao and his son and Tao Yuanming developed five-character poetry. At the same time, seven-character poetry has also developed greatly.
Before the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the rhythm and rhyme of poetry had not yet formed a rule that everyone abided by. It was only up to the author to write according to his personal content needs and feeling of rhyme. In the Wei and Jin Dynasties, due to the influence of Sanskrit phonetics from India (anciently known as Tianzhu), my country's phonology has developed. Zhou Zhe and Shen Yue of Qi Liang summarized the pronunciation rules of Chinese characters and put forward the theories of "four tones" and "eight diseases", which enabled poetry creation to develop from natural rhythm to the pursuit of rhythm. There was a need to pay attention to level and obliqueness in poetry writing. and the nature of rhyme form the main content of metrical poetry.
The Tang Dynasty was the heyday of the development of Chinese poetry and the golden age of classical poetry. On the basis of inheriting the poetry of the previous dynasties, the poetry of the Tang Dynasty developed further and formed a fixed classification. There are two classifications, one is ancient style poetry, also called ancient style; the so-called ancient style poetry refers to imitating the traditional poetry style before the Tang Dynasty. It does not have a certain rhythm, the length can be long or short, the rhymes are relatively free, and the number of words in the sentences is regular. There are also irregular ones; among them, there are mainly two types: five-character ancient style and seven-character ancient style. The second is modern-style poetry, also called modern-style poetry (the "modern" refers to the Tang Dynasty), which is what we call metrical poetry; modern-style poetry is not as free as ancient poetry, and is strict in terms of length, rhyme, rhythm, and opposition. requirements. It can basically be divided into two types: verses and quatrains. Rhymed poems and quatrains are divided into five-character and seven-character verses. Rhymed verses with more than eight lines are called arranged verses.
In the middle of the Tang Dynasty, a new genre was derived from poetry. This genre was most developed in the Song Dynasty, which was Ci. Because Ci is derived from poetry, Ci is also called "Poetry Yu"; in addition, because the number of words in the sentences of Ci is different, the ancients also called it "Long and Short Sentences".
In the Yuan and Ming dynasties, a new genre appeared, called Qu, also known as Sanqu. Qu can be said to be another form of lyrics. So how is it different from a word? Except for the different accompaniment instruments during singing, the language is closer to spoken language. The most prominent feature is that you can add lining words. For example, Zhang Yanghao's "One of the Three Poems of Leisurely Living" "Yesterday the willows were leaning on each other, today the rain and snow are falling, and the swallows in the community are suffering. (It's not that the turbid mash has a taste, (how) to spend (this) sun and moon things." Among them. The words in brackets are called lining words.
The above briefly introduces the development history of Chinese classical poetry