Compared with The Book of Songs, As the earliest literary collection in northern China, As the representative of the southern literary collection, The Songs of Chu included the songs of Chu, and its compilers still have different opinions, among which the works of Qu Yuan and Song Yu are the most concerned. Just like the Book of Songs, it is not easy to investigate the author of Chu Ci. For example, in 1979, an article called "Evocation of Soul" in the Collection of Songs of the South was regarded as "Qu Yuan's work" by Liang Shenjiong and "Fooling around Fu", but Zhu agreed with Wang Yi and classified it as Song Yuzhi's work.
The name of "Chuci" was first seen in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty. "Biography of Zhu Han Maichen" records: "Huiyizi strictly helps your fortune and recommends buying a minister. Summoned, said the spring and autumn period, said Chu dialect, and the emperor even said (press: that is, yue). " In the Biography of Wang Han Bao, there is another story: "When he proclaimed himself emperor, the story of Emperor Wu was revised ... and he was called to read it in order to write about Jiujiang." Huang of Song Dynasty concluded in the Preface to the Correction of Songs of Chu: "All songs of Gai and Song are written in Chu language, with Chu sounds, Chu places in mind and Chu events as their names, so they can be called' Songs of Chu'." (see Song Wenjian, vol. 92)
Chu, located in the south, was originally a barbarian country despised by the Central Plains. However, its cultural origin was influenced by Shang Dynasty and Zhou Tong. Chu Zhuangwang's expansionist forces won the Central Plains and absorbed more northern culture politically. It goes without saying that the literature of Chuci is deeply influenced by The Book of Songs. However, different from the social realism of northern literature, Chu Ci is influenced by southern nationalities, with warm and romantic expression and religious content. Through the description of myths and legends, we can express rich thoughts and feelings, and present wonderful and delicate artistic skills, such as metaphor, symbol, support and so on. , has been further developed and applied here. Moreover, Chu music and local spoken language are different from those in the north, and the works present a completely different literary style from those in the north. It is a prose that changed from the development of northern poetic literature to political thought, and it can blossom and bear fruit in southern Chu, making it the second spring in China's poetic history after The Book of Songs.
The representative writers of Chuci are Qu Yuan, Song Yu and others, but most of other works, such as Le Tang and Jing Ke, have not survived. The main author of Songs of the South is Qu Yuan, who has created such immortal works as Li Sao, Nine Songs, Nine Chapters and Tian Wen. During the period of Xin Mang, Liu Xiang compiled the works of Qu Yuan, Song Yu and others into sixteen volumes of Songs of the South, which has been lost. Later, Wang Yi added his "Jiu Si" to seventeen articles, annotated the whole book, and became a "Songs of the South". Today, Wang Yi's Songs of the South still preserves the works of Jia Yi, Huainan Xiaoshan, Zhuang Ji, Bao Wang, Liu Xiang and others in the Western Han Dynasty. Guo Pu in Jin Dynasty wrote three volumes of Notes on Chu Ci. The catalogue of Sikuquanshu says: "Liu Xiangchu collected Qu Yuan's Li Sao, Jiu Ge, Tian Wen, Jiu Zhang, Yuan You, Buju, Fisherman, Song Yu's Nine Arguments, Evocation and Classic Tea, and Yi Youyi wrote Ban Gu's Jiu Si. "
Works or styles imitating Chu Ci are sometimes called "Chu Ci Style" or "Sao Style". Sao, named after Li Sao, was called Sao [1] by later generations, and was the originator of realism and romanticism in China respectively. Compared with the Book of Songs, it was called "wind" because of the style of fifteen countries. Later generations often call poetry coquettish, or call poets "poets".