The Book of Songs has a lofty position and far-reaching influence in the history of China literature, which has laid a fine tradition of China's poetry and thus formed the national characteristics of China's poetry art.
First, realism and traditional spirit.
The Book of Songs is based on real social life, without fantasy and grotesque, and there are few supernatural myths. Sacrifice, feasting and farming described are the products of social economy, etiquette and music culture in Zhou Dynasty. The description of the current situation, war corvee, marriage and love shows the political situation, social life, customs and people's feelings of the Zhou Dynasty. This "hungry people sing about their food, and laborers sing about their affairs."
Second, the tradition of lyric poetry
Since the Book of Songs, lyric poetry has become one of the main forms of poetry.
Thirdly, elegance and literary innovation.
The enthusiasm for reality, strong political and moral consciousness and sincere and positive attitude towards life in The Book of Songs were inherited and carried forward by Qu Yuan, and were summarized as the spirit of elegance by later generations.
Later poets often advocate the spirit of elegance to carry out literary innovation. Chen Ziang lamented Qi Liang's "elegance", while Li Bai lamented that "elegance is not long enough, who can fail me?" Du Fu was even more elegant, while Bai Juyi said that elegance was over-flourishing, and there was no empty talk. Many outstanding poets in the Tang Dynasty inherited the spirit of elegance. Moreover, this spirit extended from Lu You in the Song Dynasty to Huang Zunxian in the late Qing Dynasty.
Fourth, Fu Bixing's example.
The expression of "Fu, Bi and Xing" in The Book of Songs has been inherited and developed in the creation of ancient poetry, which has become an important feature of China's ancient poetry. The Book of Songs also proves the artistic creativity of working people with vivid facts. The overlapping forms and accurate, vivid and beautiful language of folk songs in The Book of Songs have been widely absorbed and used by later poets and writers. The Book of Songs, with its profound social content and beautiful artistic form, attracts the attention and reference of later scholars to folk songs. The flexible and diverse poetic forms and vivid and rich language of The Book of Songs have also had an important influence on various genres of literature in later generations. During the Wei and Jin Dynasties, Cao Cao, Ji Kang and others all studied the Book of Songs and wrote four-character poems. The rhymes of Fu, Fu, Prose and Ming in the history of literature are also related to The Book of Songs.
The birth of The Book of Songs (including its generation, collection and compilation) first created a new style in the history of China's poetry-four-character style. Before the Book of Songs, although poetry was born, it did not have its own fixed style, and it was still in oral form, generally dominated by two words; In the era of The Book of Songs, China's poems really laid their own creative pattern and formed a relatively stable style. In other words, the real beginning of China's poetry was in the era of The Book of Songs.