In the "Preface to Poems" and its reviews, the important creative issues that Zhong Rong came into contact with:
The first is the stacking of allusions and reasons that existed in the development of poetry at that time. The two ills of deliberately pursuing rhythm brought about by the prevalence of the theory of four tones and eight diseases brought sharp criticism. Zhong Rong believes that poetry is originally the expression of the writer's true feelings inspired by external objects, but "a pampered disciple, shameful and incompetent, embellishes the whole day and moans all night long." One of the manifestations of complaining for no reason is the use of allusions. Zhong Rong pointed out that the trend of piling up a large number of allusions makes poems that "reflect emotions" become "almost the same as book notes", which seriously hinders the healthy development of poetry creation. His criticism is a step further than Liu Xie's criticism in "Wen Xin Diao Long Shi Lei". The second manifestation of the innocent moaning of "descendants of noble princes" or "eldest sons" is that they deliberately pay attention to the sound quality, "the work is precise, the folds are subtle, and the mausoleum is designed, so the writing is restrained and the beauty is damaged." , Zhong Rong ignored that focusing on the beauty of rhythm is an inevitable requirement for the development of poetry art to a certain stage. His criticism is inevitably biased, but the opinion that poetry should be "tonal-tuned" and natural and harmonious is completely correct. Secondly, it provides a theoretical explanation for the emergence of five-character poetry. Since the Book of Songs is mainly in four-character style, and the Book of Songs was regarded as a Confucian classic in the past, five-character poetry has generally developed in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, replacing the four-character poetry and becoming the dominant poetry form (VII When Yan and Yan began to take shape), due to the influence of traditional Confucianism, theoretical criticism also showed a strong orthodox conservative view on the form of poetry: emphasizing four words and despising five words. For example, Zhi Yu's "Wen Liu Bie Lun" ("Yi Wen Lei Ju") believes that "the ancient poems are generally based on four characters" and "the rhyme of the elegant sound, four characters is the correct one; the rest are in twists and turns, but not in sound." It's right." Liu Xie's "Wen Xin Diao Long·Ming Poetry" mainly discusses five-character poetry, but it also talks about "four-character formal style" and "five-character style", and does not recognize the due status of five-character poetry form in the poetry world. However, Zhong Rong pointed out that the four-character form is outdated. "Every time the text is complicated but has little meaning, it is rarely practiced in the world." Five-character poetry is in the ascendant. "It is the most important part of literary works and is the flavor of all works." It plays an important role in poetry. In terms of the basic characteristics of "instructing things and shaping things, and writing things with emotion", it is "the most detailed". This discussion opens up a theoretical way forward for the historical development of poetic form.
In order to advocate five-character poetry, Zhong Rong also discussed the origin and historical development of five-character poetry. Although there are inaccuracies in it, there are many insightful insights in the discussion. The fourth is about the writer’s artistic genre and criticism. Focusing on the stylistic characteristics of writers and works, Zhong Rong attached great importance to the inheritance and development relationship between poets of the past dynasties, as well as the distinction between different artistic schools, and put forward a more systematic view. He not only created a new way for the study of style change, but also made some concise and insightful comments on specific writers and works. For example, the characteristics of Ruan Ji's poems are: "The words are within the ears and eyes, and the feelings are expressed in the outer world", "Self-directed and lofty, there are many emotional words, the purpose is far-reaching, and the return interest is hard to find" and so on. However, because he did not pay much attention to the decisive influence of the writer's life experience on the writer's style, and he did not carefully consider the diversity and complexity of the writer's ideological and artistic aspects, he usually only focused on certain similarities between different writers in a certain aspect. Therefore, in most cases, the study of his style and genre is not only confusing, but also far-fetched, which has caused a lot of criticism in later generations.
Although "Shipin" has historical limitations, it is still an important and influential work in the history of Chinese literary theory criticism.