The difference between landscape poetry and pastoral poetry

Pastoral poetry and landscape poetry are often referred to as the same category, but they are two different themes. Pastoral poetry will write about rural scenery, but the main body is about rural life, farmers and farming. Landscape poems mainly describe natural scenery, and poets' aesthetic appreciation of landscape images is often associated with travel.

Landscape poetry originated from Xie Lingyun in the Southern Dynasty (Song Dynasty), and pastoral poetry originated from Tao Yuanming in the Jin Dynasty, represented by Wang Wei and Meng Haoran in the Tang Dynasty. This kind of poetry is good at describing natural scenery, pastoral scenery and comfortable seclusion. Poetry and painting are meaningful and beautiful, the style is quiet and elegant, the language is beautiful and refined, and the line drawing technique is used.

Landscape pastoral poetry belongs to the category of landscape poetry, focusing on singing landscape pastoral in natural scenery. Landscape pastoral poetry formed a poetic monument in the prosperous Tang Dynasty. As for the counterexamples of more landscape poems than pastoral poems, it is not very prominent. Ancient excellent pastoral poetry is an artistic representation of the natural beauty of mountains and waters, so it has strong artistic appeal and gives people beautiful enjoyment. The main feature of this kind of poetry is that "all scenery words are sentimental words", that is, the natural scenery written by the author is integrated with the author's subjective feelings, or the scenery is used to express feelings, or the scene is blended. The main representatives of landscape pastoral poetry are Xie Lingyun, Tao Yuanming, Meng Haoran, Wang Wei, Fan Chengda and Yang Wanli. Li Bai, Du Fu, Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi also have a large number of excellent works describing landscapes.