The literary criticism in the Tang and Song Dynasties mainly revolved around the creation of poems, words and essays, and carried out several large-scale literary creation movements. In the form of criticism, there are a lot of poems, words, prefaces and postscripts. In the early Tang Dynasty, the main problem faced by the development of literature was how to correct the tendency of literature to emphasize form over ideological content since the Southern and Northern Dynasties. In the late Tang Dynasty, the Five Dynasties and the Ten Kingdoms period, this * * *, aestheticism style rose again, so the literature in the early Song Dynasty also raised similar problems to literary criticism. In this regard, writers in Tang and Song Dynasties all carried out poetry innovation movement under the banner of retro. They quoted the fine tradition of literature in the pre-Qin and Han dynasties (literature in the Tang Dynasty was also advocated in the Song Dynasty), and strongly emphasized the social thought and the function of transforming reality of literature.
Poetic reform movement. Poetry in the Tang Dynasty, from the initiation of Jian 'an's poetic style to the literary opinions of the four outstanding poets in the early Tang Dynasty, swept away the decadent poetic style in the literary world at that time with their own opinions and fruitful creative practice. In the prosperous Tang Dynasty, outstanding poets such as Wang Wei, Li Bai, Du Fu, Gao Shi, Cen Can and Meng Haoran. Carrying forward the tradition of elegance and vulgarity, it has formed many poetic schools with distinct styles, such as realism, romanticism, pastoral poetry and frontier poems, and created the heyday of ancient poetry. After the middle Tang Dynasty, social contradictions became increasingly prominent. In order to cooperate with the political reform, Bai Juyi and others focused on the utilitarian view of poetry, in order to make up for the current political situation, vent people's feelings and advocate the new Yuefu movement, and put forward the loud slogan of combining articles with the times and combining songs with poems, demanding that literature expose social contradictions as much as possible and play a thorn role. The new Yuefu movement also advocated the use of the technique of comparison and xing to make the art form as popular as possible. These ideas have had a great influence on the tendency of prose culture creation in Song Dynasty. Ci, in particular, directly inherited the distinctive creative tradition of Tang poetry, formed two styles of bold and graceful, and made extraordinary achievements in art.
In terms of artistic form, poets in the Tang Dynasty did not exclude the nutrition of absorbing the poetic techniques of the Six Dynasties. Under the guidance of poetry theory, five-character ancient poems, seven-character ancient poems, classical poems, metrical poems, all kinds of qupai, epigraph and other poetic forms have matured and stereotyped. Du Fu also summed up the theory of poetry in the form of quatrains. In "Play as Six Poems", he put forward the view that loving the ancients and learning from many teachers are my teachers. This style of study, which strives for innovation on the basis of inheriting the achievements of predecessors, is also an important reason for the prosperity of poetry in Tang and Song Dynasties.
Ancient prose movement. The theory of prose in Tang and Song Dynasties starts from the utilitarian function of Confucian literature and emphasizes the function of literature to interfere with society. Han Yu, the leader of the ancient prose movement, put forward that literature should carry Tao, and the literati led by the eight masters of Tang and Song Dynasties set off a vigorous ancient prose movement. They advocate the Confucian idea of ruling the world actively, demand that the prose should have the ideological content of assisting the current situation and things, advocate the fine tradition of simplicity, elegance and rich content in the prose of pre-Qin philosophers and Historical Records, and oppose the style of parallel prose that puts facts and avoids things. Among them, Han, Liu, and Su have the highest theoretical achievements. (For details, please refer to the book "Renaissance in China-Ancient prose Movement"). The theory of "carrying Tao" in literature has become a powerful weapon of Piwen style in recent thousand years, with far-reaching influence. However, Neo-Confucianism in the Song Dynasty dogmatized Taoism, rejected the laws of literature and art with Taoism, and unilaterally pursued Taoism and Ming Dow, which also had a negative impact on later literary creation and the study of literary skills and theories.
On the basis of inheriting the theory of the relationship between words and images of literary critics in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, Jiao Ran, a poet in the Tang Dynasty (common name Xie Qingzhou) and Si Kongtu, a poetry critic, discussed the artistic conception of poetry, which is of epoch-making significance in the history of literary theory. Jiao Ran's poetic style introduced the realm theory of Buddhism, and put forward the view that poetry is influenced by situation for the first time, requiring poets to pay attention to discovering profound connotation (material meaning) when observing things, and to express implication, including feelings in images, in writing, so as to achieve the unity of human feelings and material environment.
Si Kongtu developed Jiao Ran's theory of artistic conception. In Shi Pin, he put forward the theory of poetic verve, including three basic viewpoints: meaning beyond taste, meaning beyond rhyme, and image beyond image, and demanded that poetry creation should contain far-reaching interest, profound thoughts and endless implication. He also set a series of artistic principles for artistic conception. Such as: the acquisition of purpose (thought), the harmony between thought and environment, and the return to the environment of virtual people (the image world injected with abstract thoughts is broad, near but not floating, far and endless, silent and full of romance, etc.). ). The Poetry also summarizes 24 poems with different styles, which has high reference value.
Poetry talk (Ci talk) is the most popular literary theory form in Song Dynasty. On June 1 day, after Ouyang Xiu wrote poems based on Zhong Rong's poems, there were more than 100 poems by Sima Guang, Wang Zhifang, Yang Wanli and Yan Yu, among which Yan Yu's Canglang poems were the most famous.
The remarkable feature of Cang Hua is to use Zen as a metaphor for poetry. Yan Yu summed up many valuable laws of literature and art from the perspective of Zen. He inherited the theory of artistic conception, and thought that literary creation should be based on wonderful understanding, not involving the road of reason, not to mention words, and deeply containing thoughts and feelings with images, such as antelope hanging horns, without traces. He also put forward five wonderful standards: meteorology, interest, true colors, proper manners and humanistic spirit. The essence of Wu Miao's theory is to emphasize the simple style of poetry. In addition, his theory of different materials and different interests clearly points out the lyrical essence of poetry and the characteristics of imagery thinking, and touches on the fundamental problem of imagery in literature and art, which is one of the rare treasures in the history of literary criticism.