The Book of Songs is the beginning of China's ancient poetry. It is the earliest collection of poems, including 3 1 1 poems from the early Western Zhou Dynasty to the mid-Spring and Autumn Period. Six of them are sheng poems, that is, only the title has no content, which is called sheng poems. There is a saying in the Book of Songs that "people can live a well-off life as long as they work hard", which means that "people can live a better life as long as they relax at work". Later, Confucianism called the society below the Datong society a well-off society.
The author of The Book of Songs is anonymous, and most of them cannot be verified. They were collected by Yin Jifu and edited by Confucius. The Book of Songs is rich in content, reflecting labor and love, war and corvee, oppression and resistance, customs and marriage, ancestor worship and feasting, and even astronomical phenomena, landforms, animals and plants. It is a mirror of the social life of the Zhou Dynasty.
Appreciation of The Book of Songs
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. It created the artistic style of portrait painting in creation, vividly portrayed and expressed the characteristics of things, people and society with its simple, true and vivid language, artistically reproduced the essence of society, and provided a model and reference paradigm for later literary creation, especially poetry creation.
Specifically, The Book of Songs painted a vivid picture of social history for that time and later generations, truly reflected the face of ancient society, eulogized the industriousness and courage of ancient people, lashed the meanness of the ruling class, and left a three-dimensional and figurative picture of history for later generations. It is a rich and vivid ancient encyclopedia.