The poetry of the Pre-Qin period is very different from the poetry of later generations in both form and content.
Poetry is one of the earliest literary forms, and it existed before the invention of writing. There are ballads - these are the ballads of oral literature. With the development of human language, poetry in the true sense has appeared.
The earliest written poetry should be regarded as the "Book of Songs", in which the poems Most of them are four-character poems, but there are also two-character, three-character, five-character, six-character, seven-character and eight-character poems.
The next two to three hundred years after "The Book of Songs" was the era of prose, until the appearance of Qu Yuan. Qu Yuan's representative work was "Li Sao", and later generations called the poems that are the same as "Li Sao" "Sao Style". " or "Sao style poetry", also called "Chu Ci style". The characteristic of Sao style poetry is the extensive use of the word "xi\some". Sao style poetry opened up a development path based on the "three-character structure" for the five or seven character poems that appeared in the future.
Five-character poetry continued to develop in the Western Han and Eastern Han Dynasties and was adopted into Yuefu. The appearance of "Nineteen Ancient Poems" by Anonymous at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty marked that five-character poetry had reached a mature stage. The rise of seven-character poetry was basically the same as that of five-character poetry. After Cao Pi's two "Yan Ge Xing" came out, seven-character poetry was officially established. But it was not until Liu Yu of the Southern Song Dynasty established the Song Dynasty more than two hundred years later that seven-character poetry became popular and matured.
The three dynasties of Qi, Liang and Chen were the periods of development of new style poetry. The main features of the so-called new-style poetry are its emphasis on rhythm and parallelism. Because this new-style poetry was first formed in the Yongming Dynasty of Qi Dynasty in the Southern Dynasties, it is also called "Yongming Style". It mostly refers to five-character poetry and requires metrical antithesis, which makes the article cadenced. This theory is called "Yongming Rhythm Theory".
In the early Tang Dynasty, the poetry world was basically still shrouded in the elegant style of palace style poetry in the Northern and Southern Dynasties. In the prosperous Tang Dynasty, a large number of extremely talented poets appeared. Modern poetry with rhymed words and ancient poetry with generous feelings are integrated into one, achieving a perfect state of both sound, rhythm and character. During this period, metrical poetry was basically mature, with strict requirements on level, rhyme, and counterpoint. Even if sometimes the requirements of leveling, rhyme, and counterpoint cannot be fully met, certain requirements must be followed, that is, paying attention to "defeat".
In addition, regarding the genre of poetry, it is generally divided into ancient poetry and modern poetry. Generally speaking, modern poetry refers to metrical poetry, which pays attention to "words, sentences, and rhyme". Ancient style poetry is relative to modern style poetry, including ancient style poetry written by poets from the Tang, Song and later periods, as well as Yuefu poetry and other forms.