Our ancestors, primitive humans, could not understand many natural phenomena, such as wind, lightning, thunder, rain, etc., so they attributed them all to gods. Out of awe, primitive humans sang and danced hymns to the gods, expressing people's expectations - good weather, good harvests, etc. This is the origin of poetry.
Traditional Chinese poetry has a long history and has experienced many changes and has continued to develop over thousands of years. The traditional poetry with written records can be traced back to the ancient folk song "Song of Attacking the Soil" written in the Yao and Shun era: I work at sunrise, rest at sundown, dig wells to drink, plow fields to eat, what power do you have for me, Emperor? The earliest collection of poems in the history of Chinese literature, the Book of Songs, appeared in the Zhou Dynasty. It collected poems from the early Western Zhou Dynasty to the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period for 500 years, and was selected and compiled into a collection of 305 poems. The Book of Songs is divided into three parts: Feng, Ya and Song.
The evolution of poetry
Our country is a country of poetry and has a long history of poetry creation. From the oral creation of people in primitive society to the Tang Dynasty in its heyday, it has been nearly two thousand years. history. The genre of poetry develops and evolves with the times, from simple to complex, from one to multiple styles, from relatively free to rhythmic. By the Tang Dynasty, it was a complete collection, with all styles available, no tone, and many styles, showing a spectacular scene of colorful colors and hundreds of flowers blooming. From then on, there were only changes in style, while genres were almost completely different from those in the Tang Dynasty. Here we only briefly introduce several poetry genres, from which we can grasp the pulse of poetry development.
The Book of Songs: The Book of Songs is my country's first collection of poems. It contains 305 poems from the early Western Zhou Dynasty to the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period, which lasted for about 500 years. The Book of Songs is divided into three parts: "Wind", "Ya", and "Song". Feng includes fifteen "national styles", Ya is divided into "Daya" and "Xiaoya", and Song is divided into "Zhou Song" and "Song". "Lu Song", "Shang Song". Among them, the folk song part "Guo Feng" is the essence of "The Book of Songs" and has become the source of Chinese literary realism. The Book of Songs mainly uses three expression techniques: "Fu", "Bi" and "Xing". Fu means to state and elaborate. A comparison is a metaphor. Xing is the use of other things as the beginning of a poem to evoke the words being chanted. Fu, Bi, Xing, Feng, Ya and Song are collectively called the "Six Meanings". The Book of Songs is mostly composed of four words and one sentence, with rhyme used in every other sentence, but it is not rigid, full of variety, and uses miscellaneous words.