Selected Works is the earliest extant anthology in China. It was compiled by Xiao Tong (50 1-53 1), the son of Liang Wudi in the Southern Dynasties, so it is also called Selected Works of Zhaoming. Since the Han and Wei Dynasties, there have been more and more prose collections, which make it difficult for scholars to read. As a result, a collection of literary anthologies with the essence came into being. The Collection of Articles compiled by Zhiyu in the Western Jin Dynasty was the earliest one, but it was a pity that its book was lost early.
Selected Works follows the tradition of compiling Selected Works separately, and contains more than 700 works from the late Zhou Dynasty to Nanliang. According to the genre, it is divided into 38 categories, such as Fu and Poetry, among which Fu and Poetry are divided into several sub-categories according to the subject matter, and the order of each category is roughly in the order of the author's year. From the time of works, except the works of Qu Yuan, Song Yu, Li Si and others.
The selected works are mainly works of the Southern Dynasties, Han, Wei, Jin, Song, Qi and Liang Dynasties. In terms of ideological content, The Selected Works contains not only works about political enlightenment, but also a large number of works about scenery and lyricism in daily life. In terms of artistic form, there are many parallel essays in Selected Works, which pay attention to literary grace, and take "meditation, profound righteousness" (Xiao Tong's Preface to Selected Works) as the main artistic standard.
It can be said that "Selected Works" is representative of the main achievements of literature in the Han, Wei and Six Dynasties, and many of its works have been included in "Selected Works" and have been passed down to this day.
Famous sentence:
1, the old horse crouches, aiming at a thousand miles. (Cao Cao's "Walking out of Xiamen, the tortoise is alive")
The wind blew during the day and suddenly returned to the western hills. (Cao Zhi's "Giving Xu Gan")
3, Lingbo micro step, Luo socks dust. (Cao Zhi's "Luo Shenfu")
4, the wood is thriving, and the spring is blooming. (Tao Yuanming's "Coming Back")
Spring grass grows in the pond, and garden willows become songbirds. (Xie Lingyun's "Climbing the Pool Upstairs")
6, the spring grass is blue, the spring water is surging, sending you to Nanpu, what is the injury? (Jiangyan Biefu)