Jiang Kui's poetic context is unique, and so is his artistic way of thinking and expression. He is good at using synaesthesia thinking and artistic synaesthesia to connect different physiological feelings and express some psychological feelings. He is also good at thinking laterally, writing emotional things, not directly depicting the front, but writing on the side, vivid and vivid. His ci did not expand in subject matter, but still wrote about Zhou Bangyan's love and chanting things along the way. His contribution mainly lies in transforming the expressive art of traditional graceful words and establishing new aesthetic norms.
Jiang Kui's ci is ethereal and noble, imaginative and natural. Have high artistic achievements. His artistic characteristics can be summarized by Zhang Yan's "empty" word. This kind of emptiness is different from the rough noise of the traditional graceful school and the wild school, and it is also different from Su Shi's emptiness characterized by broadmindedness. In a word, Jiang Kui is better at using the poet's brushwork to enter words, more using the technique of "Sao" to enter words, and he is very good at capturing and expressing ethereal artistic conception without making more qualitative descriptions of objective things. When writing ci with Sao pen, he is good at absorbing the characteristics of Jiangxi poetry style, which is thin, tough and steep, so there is a strong and clean atmosphere in the ethereal.
Jiang Kui's ci has the characteristics of "emptiness" and "elegance". Jiang Kui's venting came from Su Shi, and Sao Ya came from Xin Qiji. Su and Xin are unintentional words, and their ethereal elegance is realized by poetic means. Jiang Kui, Su Tong and Xin Tong used poems as auxiliary words, but he deliberately wrote words, integrating the rhythm, creative style and aesthetic ideal of words to a certain extent, and combining the ethereal and elegant that were not necessarily related to each other to form a new style of words. The theory and creation of Jianghu Ci School in Southern Song Dynasty is to explain and popularize this ethereal and elegant ci style. According to his own understanding of the spirit of music, he reformed the music scores of Tang and Song Dynasties, so that the spirit of popular music and traditional elegant music was interlinked. He summed up the statutes of practical learning, drew the same meaning from many allusions, and sublimated concrete emotions into ethereal and vague interests; He used vulgar themes to express elegant and upright feelings. Based on the characteristics of ci style, he guided the situation, followed the custom and refined, integrated ethereal and elegant, and formed a new ci style. Song people take wisdom as their word, and their feelings are vague. Being reduced to Jianghu and far away from political turmoil makes the feelings expressed by Jianghu poets mostly a kind of elegance. The emotion of Jiang Kui's ci is that he flies in a lonely cloud and disappears without a trace. Because there is no definite meaning, the themes of Dimfragrance and Shuying have not been determined for more than a thousand years. Although Shi Dazu, Wu Wenying, Zhou Mi and other small officials have certain realistic feelings, they are mainly lyrical and have the characteristics of ethereal structure. What Zhang Qian, Wang and others expressed was the pain of national subjugation and the sorrow of leaving the old people behind in the existing houses in Song Dynasty, which was difficult to implement in specific events. Living in the Jianghu, comparing with social reality, has contributed to the combination of ethereal emotion and coquettish character.
The creative style of Ci in Song Dynasty tends to be "empty" and the aesthetic ideal tends to be "elegant". It was only under Jiang Kui's pen that they were tied up. Jiang Kui abides by his true colors, and everything starts from statutes, which makes the combination of ethereal and elegant inevitable. Jiang Kui made a comprehensive refinement of ci style. Poets changed greatly in the middle and late Southern Song Dynasty, and all poets had their own style characteristics. Later, these similar styles came together to form a school of ci. This is the Southern Song Dynasty Jianghu Ci school with Jiang Kui as the model. In three words and two episodes, the frequent gatherings of Jianghu Ci-poetry clubs are all practicing and conveying Jiang Kui's ethereal and elegant words. Such a typical school of Ci, which integrates five elements: poet, ci-writing, ci-selection, ci-theory and ci-society, is still rare in the history of ancient China literature.
Jiang Kui engaged in the creation of Ci with a conscious mind, and earnestly explored various statutes of Ci. Therefore, some poets in the Southern Song Dynasty, represented by Jiang Kui, were collectively called "Sao Ya School" by later generations. These include Jiang Kui, Shi Dazu, Gao, Zhang Yan, Wang, and others in the middle and late Southern Song Dynasty. This is another word school formed after Xin Qiji. They are different from the graceful school and the wild school since Su Xin. They pay more attention to the arrangement of artificial thinking, similar to Zhou Bangyan. However, their pursuit of style is more clear and conscious, and they pay more attention to the traditional traditions of "elegance" and "coquettish". The so-called "elegance" means that they are all influenced by the times, flaunting elegance and taking elegance as their aesthetic ideal. The so-called "Sao" refers to the poet's brushwork, focusing on inheriting the lyric tradition initiated and represented by Li Sao, with the main purpose of expressing oneself and expressing self's subjective description. Paying attention to lyricism is an important feature of this school of poets, and it is also their development and contribution to ci. The poets of Saoya School enhanced the self-expression ability of Ci, enriched the lyric means of Ci, and made some pioneering achievements in the history of Ci. However, in order to pursue elegance, they embarked on a road that was too obscure, small and broken, lacking in broadening artistic conception and means, and brought Ci into a narrow world, which played a negative role in limiting the development of Ci. Jiang Kui is the highest representative of this school.