Chu Ci experienced Qu Yuan's creation, imitation after Qu Yuan's submission, collection in early Han Dynasty and collection by Liu Xiang. This book should have been written between 26 BC and 6 BC. Liu Xiang's original book Chu Ci died early, and later generations can only trace back and guess the original appearance indirectly through Wang Yi's Chu Ci (the original book is gone) and Song Hongxingzu's Chu Ci Supplement (Chu Ci Supplement).
Songs of the South is of extraordinary significance to the whole cultural system of China, especially to literature. It initiated the romantic literature in China, and made later generations call this style "Chu Ci" and "Sao". [4-5] Poetry, novel, prose and drama all exist in different degrees.
The study of Chu Ci and its research history are now called "Chu Ci", which flourished in Han and Song Dynasties and became a prominent school in the classical culture hall of modern China. As early as the Tang Dynasty, Chu Ci flowed into Japan and other "Confucian-Chinese cultural circles", and even into Europe after16th century. By the19th century, Chu Ci had aroused widespread concern in Europe and America, and a large number of translation and research works in various languages appeared. In the field of international sinology, Chuci has always been one of the hot spots of research.
abstract
Chu Ci is the earliest collection of romantic poems and the source of romantic literature. The name "Chu Ci" first appeared in Records of the Historian and Biography of Corrupt Officials. It can be seen that this name already existed in the early Han Dynasty at the latest. Its original meaning refers to Chu Ci in general, and later becomes a proper name, which refers to the new poetic style represented by Qu Yuan's creation during the Warring States Period. At the end of the Western Han Dynasty, Liu Xiang sorted out the works of Qu Yuan and Song Yu, and the works of Xiaoshan, Dong Fangshuo, Bao Wang and Liu Xiang in Huainan in the Han Dynasty, with a total of 16 articles named "Songs of the South". It is the ancestor of the set. Later, Wang Yi added his Jiu Si to Article 17. They are: Li Sao, Jiu Ge, Tian Wen, Jiu Zhang, Yuanyou, Buju, Fisherman, Jiu Bian, Evocation, Grand Tactics, Xi Shi, Recruit Hermit, Seven admonitions and Mourning. This seventeen-article chapter structure has become a popular reading for later generations.
The Songs of Chu describes the mountains, rivers, people and historical customs of Chu with the dialect phonology of Chu (now Hunan and Hubei), which has a strong regional cultural color. As Huang, a poet in the Song Dynasty, said, "All books are written in Chu language, and Chu sounds are written, and Chu knows everything" (Notes on the East View). The book is mainly based on Qu Yuan's works, and other articles also inherit the form of Qu Fu, with unrestrained feelings and strange imagination. Compared with the simple four-character poems in The Book of Songs, the sentence patterns of Chu Ci are more vivid, and sometimes Chu dialect is used in sentences, which is more suitable for expressing rich and complicated thoughts and feelings.
Some works of Chuci are sometimes called "Chuci Style" or "Sao Style" because they imitate the style of Chuci. Sao is named after Li Sao, one of the works, so "future generations may call it Sao", while The Book of Songs is called "Feng" because of the style of the fifteen countries, which is the originator of China's realism and romanticism respectively. Later generations often call poetry coquettish, or call poets "poets".