So, what is Fu? Fu originated in the Warring States Period, flourished in the Han and Tang Dynasties, and declined in the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties. During the Han and Tang Dynasties, there were literati who only wrote poems without writing them, but there were almost no talented people who only wrote poems without writing them. After Jian 'an and even the whole Six Dynasties, Fu was even praised as a poem. Qu Yuan's works are called Fu in historical records, and Qu Yuan's works are also called Fu in Hanshu. Later generations praised history and Han, so they called the works of Qu Yuan and others Fu.
The first person to use the word "Fu" as a style should push Sima Qian. During the reign of Emperor Wendi of Han Dynasty, The Book of Poetry became a Confucian Classics. In this context, it is extremely inappropriate to call Qu Yuan's works poems. However, Qu Yuan's works can only be read but not sung, and it is not appropriate to call them "songs". So Sima Qian chose two names: Ci and Fu. However, he still prefers to use words to name Qu Yuan's works, because Qu Yuan's works are rich in literary talent. The works of Song Yu, Le Tang and Jing Ke are called "Fu". What really calls one's work Fu is. Then at the end of the Western Han Dynasty, literati often wrote their own works in the name of "Fu".
Fu is a marginal style between poetry and prose. Between them, Fu is closer to poetic style. From the Han Dynasty to the early Tang Dynasty, Fu was closer to poetry than prose. From the perspective of subject matter, the subject matter of Chu Ci works is relatively simple, and most of them are "sad people don't meet." Moreover, its form is relatively fixed, and they all imitate Qu Yuan's works and write their own misfortunes and troubles like Qu Yuan. The extravagant decorations in Qu Yuan's Evocation of Soul have a great influence on Han Da Fu. Fu has a strong literati flavor since its birth, which is the reason why it is deeply influenced by Chu Ci. Sao style fu mostly adopts the metaphor of "vanilla beauty" in Chu Ci, and often follows the metaphor of Chu Ci.
Since the word "Fu" was formed, Fu and poetry have been intertwined and influenced each other. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, there was a confluence of poetry and fu. However, poetry and fu are necessarily two different styles. Generally speaking, most poems are written for feelings, while Fu often writes for feelings. Poetry focuses on lyricism, and fu focuses on narrative objects. Liu Xizai, a poet in A Qing, said: "Different from poets, there is less emotion in poetry and more emotion in poetry."
There are roughly three styles of Han Fu, namely, Sao Fu, Four-character Poetry Fu and Prose Fu. . Judging from the structure and language of fu, prose, seven-style, argumentative and Tang-style fu are all close to prose, and some of them can be completely classified as prose. The poetic features of Fu are somewhat similar to prose poems in modern literature. It has three main characteristics: first, sentences are mainly four or six sentences, and parallel antithesis is pursued; Second, it requires harmony in phonology; Third, pay attention to algae decoration and allusions in language. Antithesis and algae decoration are a major feature of Han Fu.
Parallel prose was greatly influenced by Fu, and matured in the Southern and Northern Dynasties compared with the Eastern Han Dynasty. Literati in Han Dynasty used a lot of parallel prose in their articles. So that some famous articles are regarded as parallel prose. For example, Wu Chengfu by Bao Zhao in the Southern Dynasties, Fu Xue by Xie Huilian and Yuefu by Xie Zhuang.