A Brief Introduction to the History of China's Poetry

Poetry has a long history in China, stretching for thousands of years. As early as the Western Zhou Dynasty to the Spring and Autumn Period, China's poems had produced a large number of brilliant chapters, which was marked by the appearance of the Book of Songs, China's first poetry collection. There are 305 poems in The Book of Songs, which are divided into three parts: wind, elegance and ode, all of which can be sung by music. Most of the chapters in The Book of Songs have a distinct sense of the times and people's nature. They make good use of fu, bi and xing. The sentence pattern is mainly composed of four words, and the sentences are repeated in many chapters, which laid a profound humanistic foundation and artistic foundation for later literary creation. At the end of the Warring States Period, a new poetic style-Chu Ci-was formed in the southern State of Chu. The sentence patterns of Chu Ci vary in length, with six words and seven words as the main ones, and the word "Xi" is often used. Qu Yuan, the founder and main author of Chu Ci, created immortal poems such as Li Sao, Nine Songs and Nine Chapters in this way, becoming the first great poet in the history of China literature. Li Sao, his masterpiece, is the most magnificent lyric poem in the history of China ancient literature. Qu Yuan was followed by Song Yu, Le Tang, Jing Ke and other Chu Ci writers. The appearance of Chu Ci marks the higher stage of China's poetry from the folk collective singing and development to the poet's independent creation. The Book of Songs and Songs of the South are the two sources of poetry development in later generations, and they are also called "coquettish" in literary history. * * * * jointly created the excellent tradition of the harmonious development of realism and romanticism in China's ancient poems, and set an example for future generations. In the early Han Dynasty, literati poetry was relatively lonely, and folk Yuefu was quite active. "Yuefu" originally refers to national music institutions, and later generations also refer to the songs collected and edited by Yuefu that can be performed by music as "Yuefu". Folk songs of Han Yuefu are the essence of Han Yuefu. Folk songs in Han Yuefu inherited the realistic tradition of folk songs in The Book of Songs, that is, "Hungry people sing about their food, and laborers sing about their things", which is easy to understand, long in narrative and full of life flavor. The sentence pattern is mainly composed of five words, which reflects the new development of poetry art. "Shang Mo Sang" and "Peacock Flying Southeast" are the best works of folk songs in Han Yuefu, and they are also representative works of narrative poems. Peacock Flying Southeast is the first narrative poem with a high degree of ideological and artistic unity in the history of China's poetry. 353 sentences, with the word 1765, are called "the saint of long poems" and "the first long poem in ancient and modern times". Under the influence of Han Yuefu, literati's five-character poems gradually developed and matured, marked by Nineteen Ancient Poems, which appeared in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. This is a group of lyric short poems written by poor literati. They are sentimental, short and affectionate, euphemistic and implicit, concise and concise, and are known as "in a word, the crown of five words".