The Book of Songs is the glorious starting point of China literature. Its appearance and high ideological and artistic achievements make it occupy a very high position in the cultural history of China and the world. Chu Ci attracts the attention of the world for its profound thought and exquisite and rich art, and it is a model of thought and art, so that an excellent tradition of combining romantic artistic expression with patriotic dedication was formed in the later history of poetry development.
The Book of Songs is the first collection of poems in ancient China, which contains 305 poems from the early Western Zhou Dynasty to the mid-Spring and Autumn Period. At first, it was only called The Book of Songs or 300 Poems, and it was not called The Book of Songs until Han scholars regarded it as one of the Confucian classics. The works in the Book of Songs are supposed to be accompanied by musical instruments, so Mozi.
The 305 poems in The Book of Songs are mainly composed of poems collected by the Zhou Dynasty with the assistance of various vassal states, poems dedicated to the monarch by nobles on special occasions such as ancestor worship, feasting, hunting and house completion, and poems satirizing and praising beauty. The content is very rich and can be summarized into four aspects.
(a) Poetry reflecting love and marriage
There are many chapters in The Book of Songs that show love, marriage and family life, among which "national style" is the most artistic and mostly produced by the people. Many poems frankly and boldly describe the love between young men and women. Their tone is healthy and optimistic, their feelings are sincere and warm, and they are very artistic. For example, in "Jing Nv at the Peak", besides the joy of love,
(2) Poetry reflecting social contradictions
The Zhou Dynasty is a slave society, and its basic contradiction is the contradiction between the aristocratic serf-owner class and serfs, and the cruel economic exploitation and personal slavery of the former are the profound roots and typical manifestations of this contradiction. For example, Storytelling, Feng Wang Gentleman in Service, Xiaoya Cai Wei and so on. All these provide us with a true historical picture of the fierce staged contradictions and conflicts in the Zhou Dynasty.
(3) An epic recording the history of Zhou tribes.
While praising the Zhou Dynasty, some poems in Ode to Ya objectively recorded the development history of Zhou tribes such as Gongliu and Daming. These poems are very narrative, describing all the history and legends from the establishment of Hou Ji, the ancestor of the Zhou Dynasty, to the destruction of the Shang Dynasty by the King of Wu.
(4) Poetry reflecting the production situation and customs.
Production activities are the basic content of social activities. Many poems in The Book of Songs reflect farming, animal husbandry, sacrifice and feasting, and show the basic features of society at that time from different angles and sides.
The Book of Songs is the foundation work of China's realistic literature. It describes things and life in simple and natural language, and truly reflects social reality. This creative method is called "elegant" style by later generations and is one of the artistic features of The Book of Songs. Whether it is a long narrative poem, a short lyric work or characterization, The Book of Songs shows it.
The use of metaphor is another artistic feature of The Book of Songs. Its application in The Book of Songs is very successful, which shows the profound observation, feeling and rich imagination of the working people, endows the work with great artistic charm and has a far-reaching influence on the poetry creation of later generations.
The third artistic feature of The Book of Songs is the language form. Four-sentence is the basic format of The Book of Songs. They are quite mature poetic languages with natural intonation, diverse syntax and neat form. Repetition of texts is another feature of the language form of The Book of Songs. The author's feelings are fully expressed in repeated singing, which also brings a sense of rhythm and music to the work. Lots of disyllabic words and rhymes.
The Book of Songs is the source of China's realistic literature. These excellent chapters laid a solid foundation for China's realistic literature and had a far-reaching impact on the development of later poetry. It is a direct biography from the ancient folk songs of Yuefu in Han and Wei Dynasties to the modern folk songs. At the same time, The Book of Songs also had a great influence on the creation of literati in past dynasties. It encourages poets and writers to actively participate in social life in the form of literature and care about the fate of the country and the sufferings of the people. Resisting the formalistic tendency divorced from social content and simply pursuing form has promoted the healthy development of poetry. The Book of Songs also had a great influence on later poetry in artistic expression. It established a simple and beautiful style, chose accurate and vivid language to describe all kinds of things, especially the figurative technique of expressing complex feelings through concrete and vivid images, which has been praised, inherited and carried forward by later poets and formed China's poetry creation.
Chuci is a new poetic style formed in Chu at the end of the Warring States Period, and it is another peak of China's poetry after The Book of Songs. The emergence and formation of Chu Ci is different from the Book of Songs, which has an ancient origin and complex background. First of all, Chu folk songs are the direct source of Chu ci. There are obvious differences between Chu folk songs and popular folk songs in the Central Plains in terms of tone, sentence pattern, rhythm, style and emotion, but there are also obvious differences from Chu Ci. Chuci is just an extended kind of literati Chuci. Secondly, Chu culture with distinctive local color is the cradle of Chu ci. Of course, the formation of Chu Ci was inevitably influenced by the culture of the Central Plains. As far as poetry is concerned, The Book of Songs, which represents the highest achievement of poetry in the Central Plains, is not only a rhetorical norm for northern vassal States to engage in diplomatic activities, but also a law and textbook for educating children and cultivating talents, and is deeply valued and loved by countries in the Jianghuai Valley. During the Warring States period, there were many politicians and literati in Chu who could write poems to express their feelings. As a senior intellectual of Chu State, Qu Yuan is undoubtedly quite expert in The Book of Songs. Therefore, many of his works, such as Tian Wen and Ode to Orange, are deeply influenced by the Book of Songs in form and system.
As a new poetic style with strong local color, Chu Ci has many unique features compared with The Book of Songs in content and form.
From the content point of view, the works of Chu Ci are permeated with a strong romantic spirit, mainly focusing on expressing the author's subjective feelings and their emotions inspired by social and natural phenomena. They no longer focus on the detailed description of the real world, but use the imagination of genius to create a colorful fantasy world, so that unyielding souls can find a way out in the fanatical struggle and rush to the light. There is a strong tragic color in the works of Chu Ci. There are many mournful poems in The Book of Songs, but all of them mean "Mourning without hurting, complaining without anger". The Songs of the South inherited the tragic artistic conception inherent in the Songs of the South, and rendered a sad and passionate picture with heavy pen and ink. As the main theme of Chu Ci, religious witchcraft contains a lot of myths and legends and witchcraft etiquette, and expresses the author's inner feelings through their description.
In terms of artistic expression, the length of Chu Ci has expanded, with greater capacity and stronger expressive force. Most of the poems in The Book of Songs are short chapters and short poems, which are concise, but grand and vast, while the songs of Chu gradually become more and more complicated, showing a brand-new atmosphere. Chuci inherited and developed the traditional metaphor in The Book of Songs, and created a series of new images. Complex and changeable. As far as sentence patterns are concerned, Songs of the South broke the cage of the four-character style of The Book of Songs and replaced it with flexible and free sentence patterns with uneven levels, forming a free and unrestrained poetic language.
As a new form of poetry, Chu Ci has a certain influence on later literature in style, which is manifested in the appearance of a large number of imitations and the promotion of other styles, especially the development of Han Fu. Its influence on later literature is mainly manifested in ideological content and artistic techniques. The enterprising spirit, indomitable fighting spirit, great personality of loving the motherland, sympathy for the people and hatred for traitors in his works have always influenced and played a role.
Chu Ci embodies a strong romantic spirit, which coexists with the realistic literary tradition in China's ancient poems represented by The Book of Songs, and has a great influence on later lyric poets. The rich expression, structure and colorful rhetoric of Chu Ci also have great influence on later literature.