Chinese poetry sprang up long before the written Language was devised, and its poetics were formed and developed through people's everyday labor, their songs and their dances.
The Book of Poetry is the first anthology of verse in China. It compiles 305 poems created between the 11th century BC and the 6th century BC. The poems are divided into three sections: feng (songs), ya (odes and epics) and song (hymns). Song was used by the ruling class during their sacrifices to the gods and ancestors. ya has two parts-odes and hymns-both Sung at courts or banquets. Ya includes odes to former heroes and satire on the Current politics of the day. Feng is the most important part of the anthology, and includes folksongs collected from 15 city states.
Of the great poets living in the 4th century BC, the most famous is Qu Yuan, born in the Kingdom of Chu (one of the seven states during the Warring States period). Qu Yuan and his follower Song Yu established a new style of poetry- Chu Ci (literally, poetry of the south). Qu Yuan's major work was Li-Sao (Sorrow after Departure).
Chu Ci developed more varied forms of poetry, freeing itself from four-character poetry, the form adopted in The Book of Poetry and developed three-character, four-character, five-character and seven-character poetry. In terms of artistic technique, Chu Ci absorbed the romantic attributes of myth and established the romantic style of Chinese literary creation.
In the wake of The Book of Poetry and Chu Ci rose a new form of poetry extant in the Han Dynasty-the yuefu folksongs (poetic genre of folk songs and ballads in the Han Dynasty). The yuefu folksongs of the Han Dynasty contained more than 100 pieces, which were mostly written in five-character lines, and later became the major form of poetry during the Wei and jin dynasties.
Five-character verse is the major form of Chinese classical poetry. The form took a long time developing from folksongs into formal literary works created by scholars. By the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, scholarly five-character poetry matured, and is marked by the accomplishment of Nineteen Ancient Poems. Poems in this anthology were not written by a single poet, nor were they created during the same period. They mainly express sorrows at parting and lovesickness, or lament the fleetingness of life. Artistically Nineteen Ancient Poems were distinguished by their lyricism and use of expressive techniques like simile, metaphor and "evocation" (beginning a song by evoking images quite apart from the central subject).
During the Jian-an period at the end of the Han Dynasty, the "Three Caos" (Cao Cao, Cao Pi and Cao Zhi) and the "Seven Jian'an Masters" (Kong Rong, Chen Lin, Wang Can, Xu Gan, Ruan Yu, Ying Xi, Liu Zhen) sustained the realism of yuefu folksongs and wrote five-character poems, unleashing an upsurge in scholarly poetry. Their poems spoke to the spirit of the times and invoked an ambience of heroism and sadness, molding a style later referred to as Jian-an. Among the seven Jian'an masters Wang Can is the most acknowledged, his Poem of Seven Sorrows mirroring the chaos caused by the war at the end of the Han Dynasty. The three Caos were very well-known in the literary circles of the Jian-an Period. The work of the eminent poet Cao Zhi (AD 192-232) was exacting and robust with exquisite description, flowery language and elegant metaphors, as in his Presented to Biao, King of Baima. Greatly influenced by yuefu folksongs but more lyrical, Cao Zhi's poems mark the transition in poetry from yuefu folksongs to five-character poetry.
Source: ccnt.com
