In the history of Chinese literature, the earliest poem we can see is the "Book of Songs" about three thousand years ago. This is the earliest collection of poems in our country, with 1***305 articles. , called "Poetry" or "Three Hundred Poems" in ancient times. Its content consists of three parts: "wind, elegance, and song", which are divided from the perspective of music. There are three types of expression techniques: Fu, Bi and Xing. Therefore, the predecessors called "Feng, Ya, Song" and "Fu, Bi, Xing" the six meanings of "Poetry". In terms of language syntax, it is basically four words per sentence. Following the "Book of Songs", in the fourth century BC, a new poetic style appeared in the Chu State called "Chu Ci". Its founder was Qu Yuan. Later, the people of the Han Dynasty compiled the works written by Qu Yuan, Song Yu and others into a book called "Chu Ci".
"Chu Ci" breaks through the four-character sentences of "The Book of Songs" and develops into five-character sentences and seven-character sentences, that is, it changes even-character sentences (four characters per sentence) into odd-character sentences (five characters and seven characters). Not only can it better express thoughts and feelings, but the rhythm and rhythm are also more musical. In the Han Dynasty, poems sung to match music appeared, namely "Yuefu poems". In terms of language, there are four-character, five-character, and miscellaneous words, but most of them are five-character. After that, literati led by Cao Cao and his son and Tao Yuanming developed five-character poetry. At the same time, seven-character poetry has also developed greatly. Before the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the rhythm and rhyme of poetry had not yet formed a rule that everyone abided by. It was only up to the author to write according to his personal content needs and feeling of rhyme. In the Wei and Jin Dynasties, due to the influence of Sanskrit phonetics from India (anciently known as Tianzhu), my country's phonology has developed. Zhou Zhe and Shen Yue of Qi Liang summarized the pronunciation rules of Chinese characters and put forward the theories of "four tones" and "eight diseases", which enabled poetry creation to develop from natural rhythm to the pursuit of rhythm, and the idea that poetry should pay attention to level and obliqueness appeared. and the nature of rhyme form the main content of metrical poetry.
The Tang Dynasty was the heyday of the development of Chinese poetry and the golden age of classical poetry. On the basis of inheriting the poetry of previous generations, the poetry of the Tang Dynasty developed further and formed a fixed classification. There are two classifications, one is ancient style poetry, also called ancient style; the so-called ancient style poetry refers to imitating the traditional poetry style before the Tang Dynasty. It does not have a certain rhythm, the length can be long or short, the rhymes are relatively free, and the number of words in the sentences is regular. There are also irregular ones; they are mainly divided into two types: five-character ancient style and seven-character ancient style. The second is modern-style poetry, also called modern-style poetry (the "modern" refers to the Tang Dynasty), which is what we call metrical poetry; modern-style poetry is not as free as ancient poetry, and is strict in terms of length, rhyme, rhythm, and opposition. requirements. It can basically be divided into two types: verses and quatrains. Rhymed poems and quatrains are divided into five-character and seven-character verses. Rhymed verses with more than eight lines are called arranged verses. In the middle of the Tang Dynasty, a new genre emerged from poetry. This genre was most developed in the Song Dynasty, which was Ci. Because Ci is derived from poetry, Ci is also called "Shiyu"; in addition, because the number of words in the sentences of Ci is different, the ancients also called it "Long and Short Sentences". In the Yuan and Ming dynasties, a new genre appeared, called Qu, also known as Sanqu. Qu can be said to be another form of lyrics. So how is it different from words? Except for the different accompaniment instruments during singing, the language is closer to spoken language. The most outstanding feature is that you can add lining words. For example, Zhang Yanghao's "One of Three Poems on a Leisurely Life" "Yesterday the willows were leaning on each other, today the rain and snow are falling, and the swallows in the community are (too) suffering. (It's not that the turbid mash has a taste, (how) to spend (this) sun and moon things." Among them. The words in brackets are called lining words.