Second, it makes a detailed distinction between various literary themes, and more importantly, it has a clear understanding of the system and style characteristics of various themes. Cao Pi's Essays on Canon divides literary styles into four types, and points out their respective characteristics: "Elegance lies in reciting",
"Book theory should be reasonable",
"Shi Ming enjoys the stone",
Poetry is beautiful. Wen Fu further divides literary styles into ten categories, and discusses the characteristics of each category. It is worth noting that he divided poetry into two categories, and pointed out that "poetry is beautiful because of emotion and bright because of body". The stylistic distinction between Wen Xin Diao Long and Wen Xuan is not only systematic, but also deeply discussed. Wen Xin Diao Long traces the origin of each style, describes its evolution, explains the meaning of its name, and comments on it with examples. Selected Works is a collection of literature compiled by style, and of course it has a detailed analysis of the problems. If literature is just a confused concept and can't be distinguished, it can't be regarded as a conscious understanding of literature, so stylistic distinction is an important symbol of literary consciousness.
The third is the conscious pursuit of literary aesthetic characteristics. The reason why literature becomes literature is inseparable from criticizing the characteristics of beauty. The so-called literary consciousness, the most important thing is the conscious pursuit of aesthetic characteristics. As mentioned above, the beauty of "poetic rhyme", "poetic sentiment" and "expressive beauty" are already aesthetic pursuits. During the Southern Dynasties, the discovery of four tones and their application in the field of poetry, coupled with the emphasis on practicality and duality, proved that they had a more conscious pursuit of formal beauty of language. "Wen Xin Diao Long" discusses the artistic features of literary works, involving brilliance, melody, kind words, metaphor, exaggeration and many other aspects, and is a symbol of literary consciousness.
Literary theories and works in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties are rich in works and distinctive in personality. Poetics has got rid of the shackles of Confucian classics, and the direction of the whole literary trend of thought is to get rid of the need of political enlightenment emphasized by Confucianism and find the meaning of independent existence of literature. A remarkable feature of literary creation in this period is that the demand for serving political enlightenment has weakened, and literature has become a personal behavior, expressing personal life experiences and feelings. Literary aesthetics tends to emphasize image, style and charm, poetry seeks meaning, pleasure seeks meaning, and painting seeks interest outside the image. This conscious aesthetic pursuit of communication among various literary forms marks the arrival of a new literary era.